


The Long Summer

by peonies



Series: university with the crew [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Canon, Summer Vacation, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7810555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peonies/pseuds/peonies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ishida Uryuu and the aftermath of everything, one year later. He and Ichigo still have a lot of things to forgive each other for. - Standalone, collegefic, set post-series. Ignores 685+.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. notes from karakura

It’s the first week of summer vacation, the end of July. Karakura is tired and sweating, just like him. Its breath is golden haze and swarms of gnats.

They’re at the park, sitting in the shade of a spreading tree. No one else is outside except for a couple of kids on skateboards, going up and down the sidewalk. His glasses are hooked into his collar by an earpiece and his shirt sticks to his back uncomfortably. Next to him, Kurosaki is sprawled belly-up on the grass like a five-year-old, snoring quietly, the fingers of his right hand still caught in the latest issue of some comic book. Chad is flipping through his own copy, turning slowly through the pages and scrutinizing each panel. He scratches his chin thoughtfully.

Orihime is off investigating a cabbage moth. It fluttered into the shade of their tree a few minutes ago. She’s been trying to get it to perch on her finger as she kneels in the grass near a bench. There’s a patch of sweat darkening the back of her orange-and-white striped shirt. He looks away, suddenly self-conscious, and stares blankly at a set of diagrams in his analytical chemistry textbook. He hasn’t been able to get much reading done since the heat wave started. The cicadas seem to like it, though. They make a shimmering sound that rises and falls like waves on the shore.

He’s eighteen now. It seems like just yesterday that they all left for university, but it’s been four months, and it’s their first chance at a vacation. It’s unclear to him why Kurosaki came back at all. He moved all the way up to Asahikawa across the strait for medical school, and it seems like more hassle than it’s worth to come back just for a month. Chad isn’t too far away at Kyodai, but he doesn’t have much of a reason to make a day trip out here, either, not since he moved. Sometimes he’ll post in the chat about cool geophysics things that he thinks they’ll enjoy, but they usually end up looking at a wall of text sprinkled with incomprehensible diagrams. Uryuu appreciates the gesture, though.

Orihime has been living in Tokyo proper since April, and she seems to be having a great time. She’s studying cognitive and behavioral sciences, but he’s not sure if she enjoys it or not. Technically, their campuses are close together, but they never seem to be free at the same time, and Uryuu has always had a tendency to get caught up in his studies. In many ways he still feels like the quiet, aloof kid that he was in high school, before the wars; his sewing skills aren’t notorious yet, but he’s repaired a few things for surprised lecture-hall acquaintances. His grades are immaculate, as always. His clothes are spotless, perfectly starched and ironed. His handwriting is neat and his notes are at the top of every Rikadai chemistry truant’s wishlist. But none of that is real, not in the way this moment is real.

At Rikadai he drifts through classes in a fog of lecturers’ speeches, mumbled advice to confused classmates, train rides home, train rides to school. Eat, study, sleep. It’s like watching someone else go to class, eat lunch, do lab work, pore through textbooks, decipher equations and structural formulas. But here, now, everything feels closer, more tangible. He’s not a ghost. When he looks at his hands, examines the calluses, it’s immediate. Hearing Chad talk about the growth patterns of this or that mineral feels like hearing someone speak clearly. Like he’s broken the surface of a swimming pool and the water is clearing out of his ears. He doesn’t know if he should be worried. But he is worried, a bit, and has been all day.

Orihime’s footsteps in the grass make him look up again. A few strands of her hair are stuck to the side of her face, wrapping under her chin, and she looks brighter than ever. Chad looks up, too, as she ducks under a low-hanging branch to talk to them.

“Let’s go inside somewhere,” she says. “I’m burning up!”

“Sounds good to me.” Chad flips his comic book shut.

Kurosaki is a challenge to wake up and all three of them have to make a concerted effort to get his eyes open, but eventually he groans and gets to his feet, rolling the magazine up and putting it under his arm. For just a second, as he turns to talk to Chad, he sees long orange hair falling from his head. Just for a second, and then they start walking, because that can’t be right. Kurosaki’s hair is short, much shorter than it used to be in high school. He wonders if he still gets questions about whether it’s bleached.

They go to a shaved ice place that has its air conditioning unit on full blast. There’s a white oscillating fan in the corner, too, with one of those dusty wire cages protecting the blades. The cold air hits him like a wall when they enter, and it raises goosebumps on Uryuu’s arms. Orihime greets the owner cheerfully and they grab a table in the back corner while she places the order. His sweat cools on his skin and he shivers, goosebumps prickling on his arms, but his shirt slowly unsticks itself from his back and sides.

The owner places a colorful mound of shaved ice in a bowl in front of them, topped with red beans and sago and tapioca. Kurosaki and Orihime are chatting about university again. He could swear they haven’t been apart a day, that they’re still high school friends in their senior year. Orihime brings up residency, and Kurosaki rolls his eyes, putting out a melodramatic sigh.

“I’ll do residency at the clinic,” he says, shoving another spoonful of ice into his mouth. He spits out a red bean into his hand. “Ugh.”

“Don’t waste food,” Orihime chides, spoon halfway to her mouth, and Kurosaki makes a face but eats it anyway. Uryuu personally finds that even more disgusting. “So you’re going to do graduate studies in Tokyo, Kurosaki-kun? I think that would be wonderful.”

“Who knows,” he grumbles, but the way he shrugs is a _yes_ if Uryuu’s ever seen one, and it’s Orihime’s turn to roll her eyes.

They chat. He’d forgotten what it was like to chat. Belatedly, he realizes that he hasn’t really been talking to anyone much, and he – really, really misses it.

Kurosaki gets a text. He tries to wipe his fingers clean on a napkin to respond, but bits of paper get stuck to the tips of his fingers and he gives up, shoving his cell phone back into his pocket with the heel of his hand.

“Who was that?” Chad asks, and Kurosaki shrugs.

“Classmate. He’s trying to move into a new apartment, wanted to know if I could help out with boxes and stuff. Guy’s been bothering everyone he knows from his pharmaceuticals seminar.”

He goes back to trying to clean his fingers, and Uryuu thinks of the address book in his own cell phone. No new numbers except for the campus emergency lines. He wonders if there should be more numbers.

“Let’s go back to my place,” Kurosaki says, stretching his arms above his head. “Karin and Yuzu keep bugging me about you guys, anyway.”

“Are you sure we’re not intruding? It’s getting pretty late.” The sunlight outside is turning red-orange, and he’s not sure whether he should head back to his apartment yet. He has a stack of journals that need to be read before he starts class at the end of August. Worry creeps under his skin like an itch.

“’Course not, Ishida,” comes the flippant reply. “They’re so much less annoying when other people are over.”

Kurosaki’s house is within walking distance, and the sun is at their backs for most of the way. Kurosaki and Chad have the comic book open between them and are debating over whether one of the main characters is actually dead or not. Orihime falls in step next to him. His heart jumps a little bit, but he pushes the feeling down before it can become anything.

“Ishida-kun,” she says in greeting, and smiles. She still wears the hairpins, but her amber hair is swept up into a bun away from her graceful neck.

“Hello, Inoue-san,” he says.

“Did you like the shaved ice?” Her eyes are inquisitive, bright.

He manages a smile. “Yes, I did.”

Her face lights up. “We should do this more often,” she says, clasping her hands behind her back. “Today was really fun!”

“You must have missed Karakura.” If he remembers correctly, she moved to an apartment pretty close to Todai. Right now, she’s staying with the Arisawas.

Orihime nods. “Very much. Didn’t you say you commute? Does it feel different now that you’re at university?”

“A little. It’s quieter than I remember it being in high school.”

She laughs and turns her head to look across the street at the people walking by. Her hair seems almost red in the light.

His hands don’t move, but he reaches for the vial at his side. There’s a styptic inside – he needs to stop the bleeding _now._

“Ishida-kun?”

Anesthetic next, in the packet, load it into the auto-injector – but how, with only one hand?

“Hmm?”

Orihime looks at him, concern written all over her face. He realizes that he’s blanked out again.

“Sorry,” he offers half-heartedly. “I was thinking about something else.” She accepts his explanation after a moment, or at least doesn’t press further. His left hand twitches, and he shakes it impatiently, then realizes he’s been clenching it in a fist. It’s stiff when he tries to uncurl his fingers, and he can feel the beginnings of a headache in his temples.

They talk about something else, not university. Music. Orihime is full of praise for an up-and-coming pop star. Uryuu hasn’t kept up with anything like that, but he asks her some questions about this Aiyuna and gets much more information than he knows what to do with – blood type, star sign, favorite foods, favorite games, favorite color, height, weight, past flings, current fling, a complete rundown of her discography and a selection of favorite music videos and live performances. It’s not his kind of music, but he doesn’t mind.

Kurosaki doesn’t even have to fish out his keys when they arrive at his home. Karin is already at the door and lets them all in. Yuzu is delighted and Kurosaki’s father is pleasantly surprised.

“Come on in,” he says in his booming voice, offering a bin of slippers as they take off their shoes. Kurosaki – perhaps it’s easier to call him Ichigo at this point, Uryuu thinks, but it still feels too close – goes barefoot.

Yuzu grabs Orihime’s hand and pulls her over to the counter, where they start laughing over what he suspects is a recounting of Ichigo’s recent antics around the house. Karin, always the more responsible one, reaches up to open a cabinet and pull out some extra bowls. He remembers when she had to use a chair. She’s grown fast, and so has Yuzu, who is a little past his waist now. Chad helps to pull some more chairs up to the table as Karin scoops rice out of the cooker into mismatched bowls. Uryuu takes them from her and sets each one on the table as she checks on the stove, using a wooden spoon to probe at a stir fry and then a pan of steamed vegetables.

When they finally sit down to eat, the tender fish is quickly plucked to the bones by inquiring chopsticks. The vegetable plate, watercress and sweet peas, takes a little while to get started, but soon it, too, disappears. Kurosaki Isshin is quizzing Chad on his love life and Ichigo is debating Orihime, Karin, and Yuzu about his hair-grooming habits.

He’s the first to clear his place, but Karin quickly takes Yuzu’s empty bowl and her own to the sink, giving each a quick rinse and yelling at her brother about his bad haircut and the hair products cluttering “her” bathroom sink. Once Kurosaki finishes his third bowl and heads to the sink, his father claps his hands to get everyone’s attention.

“We are going to the mall,” he says. Yuzu and Orihime cheer. Karin sighs and says _Daaaad_ and Chad starts collecting his bag.

The Karakura Shopping Center is actually not a mall as much as a few blocks of stores, stands, and hawker booths that are open until absurd hours of the night. Uryuu worries for a moment about whether he’ll be up in time to catch his train in the morning, but he’s quickly swept along by Chad and Orihime, pointing out things that bring up their nostalgia. The tiny katsu stand, the konbini with tapioca tea, the movie theater, the pawn shop window display with the broken saxophone. He looks around, hands in his pockets. He’d been down once or twice at night, at least once for a Don Kanonji appearance and signing, but his visits to fabric stores and hardware repair shops had been mostly during the day. He did his groceries downtown, too. He’s never really stayed out this late.

He and Orihime split off from the group for a moment as she lingers by a claw machine. The kid at the controls is the picture of concentration, brow furrowed, tongue sticking out with effort. He spends an eternity fiddling with the positioning of the claw, and then drops it onto a small stuffed snake. The claw’s grip is too loose, though, and the kid lets out an exasperated groan as the toy drops out of its prongs. He slaps the console in frustration before shuffling away with his friends.

Orihime doesn’t try the machine but does comment on the cuteness of a green stuffed frog as they pass. He files that away as a sewing project and shifts his bag on his shoulder. The Kurosaki clan and Chad are nowhere to be seen, but he knows they’re somewhere up ahead, and Uryuu suspects the toy shop, which has the brightest and biggest display in the shopping district. Small children are drawn to it like moths to a street light, and Kurosaki isn’t really that different from a small child.

“You know, Ishida-kun, I don’t think you’re very outgoing at university,” she says with an amused smile. “You’re very quiet, even around your friends.”

“Is that so?” he demurs.

“And you haven’t gotten a girlfriend, right?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Is that important?” _What does that even mean?_ But he stops himself at the edge of hope.

“Well, Kurosaki-kun’s been telling me about the things he’s up to in Hokkaido, and Chad tells me he’s very close with someone,” she says. “At first I thought you were just hiding a big secret from the rest of us, but that’s not the case, is it?”

Intellectually, he knows that this is just an innocent question, but the answer is extremely hard to produce, and he ends up mumbling something about not having time or money.

“I think it’d be good for you. You’re a little distant these days,” she says simply, and then steers the conversation into less turbulent waters.

A few years ago he never would have guessed it, but Orihime has become the most socially adept out of all of them, having mastered the art of conversation at university and attracted a dense nebula of friends. From her mannerisms, she seems like the same flighty girl he knew in high school, but it’s like she knows more, now. She’s more grounded. She always had an uncanny ability to read him through and through, but now she’s not afraid to let him know.

There’s a sour taste in his mouth and his heart jumps when he wonders why – and he stops. Thinking. About it.

“Well, I live with two other girls, and we all go to Todai,” she is saying. “Megumi is really nice, and messy like me! We’ve been watching a drama together over the summer and we text each other after each episode.” She laughs. “She’s never watched one before, so it’s really exciting for her! Ayako is the responsible one. She’s the best cook, too, even though she’s studying genomics and Megumi is going to be a nutritionist.”

“You don’t fight?” he asks, making sure his mouth works.

“Not really. We all get along really well. I think the closest we’ve been in a fight is over the utilities, because the water bill was really high and we didn’t know why. It was a leak, though, and we didn’t fight.”

“Sounds nice. Are you living together next year?”

“Yep! A new freshman from Hiroshima is moving in with us in three weeks. I think her name is Junko? She’s been watching the same drama we have. Megumi met her on a chatroom for prospective Todai students. She seems really nice.”

“I see.”

She suddenly stops to look at the display of a cake store – it’s closed for the night, since it’s a family business – and he waits next to her as she hums and inspects ribbons of piping and little decorative figurines.

“Look, Ishida-kun,” she laughs. “They used the same figurine for the bride and the bridesmaid. They’re just different colors.”

“I don’t think that’s a bridesmaid,” he says, and before he can stop himself – “Those dresses are pretty old-fashioned for a Western wedding.”

She finds his observation hysterical and continues walking, hooking an arm through his. His skin lights up where it meets hers and he prays to high heaven that she doesn’t notice his face bursting into flames. If she does, she has the courtesy not to mention it.

The toy shop looms over the entire complex. It’s five stories high and has dancing lights out front and big neon signs, and he wonders if Chad and Ichigo are still with the girls.

A gaggle of drunks, four young guys, rounds the corner up ahead. He knows they are drunk because they are louder than the nearby chorus of tiny children protesting their curfews.

“Let’s cross the street,” he suggests, but Orihime shakes her head.

“I deal with this all the time. They heckle more if I cross the street.”

He remembers that she lives in a busier part of Tokyo than Karakura and trusts her judgement, and just keeps his head down as they pass.

It doesn’t work. Orihime ignores the predictable slew of disgusting comments thrown her way with amazing dignity. They keep their hands to themselves, but one of the more confrontational drunks bumps Uryuu’s shoulder and uses it as an excuse to pick a fight.

“Whatthefuck, man,” he says, turning around. He smells like cheap beer. Everything smells like cheap beer around these guys. “You tryin’ to start something?”

 _Keep walking,_ he thinks, but they don’t. He tries, but the guy – Angry Eyebrows, he dubs him in his head – thrusts an arm out in front of him, blocking his path, and sneers.

“Hey,” Angry Eyebrows says, falsely cheerful. “Don’t ignore me, kid. You wanna hit me again?”

He spreads his arms, puffing up his chest. Orihime scowls. Uryuu’s heart is hammering against his ribcage and if he could run, he would, but his legs won’t move and he’s been hit with a cold sweat. This is the worst time for this to happen. He should be firing back word for word, laying this guy out with no problem, but –

“Let’s go, Ishida-kun.” Orihime tries to pull him away.

“No, stay, Ishida _-kun,”_ Angry Eyebrows coos. “Come on, I’m right here.” He pushes almost playfully at Uryuu’s shoulder, making him stumble backwards. “Come on.”

“Leave us alone.” There’s a warning note in Orihime’s voice. “There are people everywhere. Everyone can see us.”

Angry Eyebrows’s friend slaps him on the back and leers at her. Angry Eyebrows shrugs and starts to turn away, but instead he uses the motion as a wind-up. Uryuu’s gut explodes in pain and the blow knocks him on his ass.

Orihime yells something, taking his textbook-filled bag and smashing it over the drunk’s head, then lashes out with her leg and cracks him in the side. Angry Eyebrows’s friend makes a grab at her and she ducks, jamming the edge of the bag into his ribs and knocking the air out of his lungs. She’s screaming bloody murder, and out of the corner of his eye he can see that the Kurosaki clan plus Chad are running towards them.

One of the drunks makes a run for it, probably the most sober of them, and Orihime has floored another. The remaining two are being restrained by Chad and Ichigo.

He knows that the is not in Hueco Mundo. He is at Karakura Shopping Center surrounded by a small crowd of people and bright lights advertising things like toys, candy, and clothing. At the same time, though, he can touch the sand-dusted stone plateau under his fingers, see the too-brilliant stars in the night sky, and feel the absence of his left hand. He cannot stand up. The reiatsu presses him down.

Then the memory passes, leaving him with a strange mixture of rage and terror in his stomach and that sour taste again on his tongue.

Kurosaki Isshin kneels in front of him and Orihime crouches next to them, hugging his bag, concern written all over her face.

“You okay?” Isshin asks. He takes a penlight out of his pocket and checks his pupil response, takes his pulse.

“I’m fine,” he says, but his voice is not at all steady. The night air is cool and soft, but it feels like full-blown winter, and he shivers. He’s sweating again.

The last time this happened it had the decency to occur in the privacy of his own home. He’d slept in an awkward position and trapped his arm under his stomach; when he woke up, he couldn’t feel anything from the elbow down. It was a Saturday morning in April, two weeks after the induction ceremony.

It’s deep and humid summer now, and he goes home to lie awake in bed, arms like iron rods by his sides, eyes refusing to shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing and rewriting this and other things for over a year because of the last arc. Decided to post it now that the manga has come to an end(?). I ragequit Bleach three times, but it always managed to worm its way back into my heart. I'll miss it.


	2. what went between

Chad calls abruptly, alone, on the first week of August. The heat wave has decidedly passed, and last night’s thunderstorm left the pavement dark with rain and the sky white and blank. They walk to the café, trying to avoid as many puddles as they can.

“So,” Chad says, hands in his pockets. “Tell me. When did it start?”

“What?” It takes a moment for him to register what Chad actually said. He hasn’t been thinking clearly as of late.

“You know what I mean. Drifting. Like you’re watching someone else live your life, talk to your friends, eat your food, sleep in your bed.”

“Always right to the point, Sado-kun,” he observes, and he’s right. Chad has always been a rather straightforward person, and even though he talks more often now, it’s always purposeful. Uryuu has never been able to master that particular skill. Words are fencing foils and elaborate screens for the Ishida family.

He doesn’t know how to answer Chad’s question, though, and thinks about it, trying to pinpoint the last time the world hadn’t been a blur.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly as they turn a corner. “I think it might have been when I went off to university. It was never problematic, though. Not until now.”

“For me, it was after the Wandenreich invasion.” Chad says this conversationally, as if he were talking about some geophysics thing again, or retelling a joke he heard on TV. “So many people died. It was fast. You could hear the screams no matter where you were in the Seireitei. After it was over, I kept remembering, whether I was sleeping or awake.”

They pass a tree that hangs over the sidewalk, dark leaves shining wet. Drops of water fall on his hair, on his neck, on his forearm. He wipes them off absentmindedly.

“I was angry all the time, and if I wasn’t angry I didn’t feel anything. I went out and hit things, sometimes with my Fullbring, just to do something with the anger. Then I broke my hand. Blew out three knucklebones.”

He chuckles, flexing his right hand in front of him, curling and uncurling the fingers. Uryuu looks at his own hand. The left one.

“So what did you do after that?”

“I thought,” Chad says. “I thought a lot. About me, you, Ichigo, Inoue-san. About my Fullbring power. I don’t know if that’s what helped. But I realized that I was feeling guilty, like I could have prevented all that death. And we both know I couldn’t have. Not like Ichigo always does. It’s not how I work.” He shrugs. “And I don’t see it anymore when I’m awake. Just when I dream, and then only once in a while.”

They stop at the intersection as cars go by, rolling through an enormous puddle and sending up short sprays of gray water from under their tires.

“It’s Hueco Mundo,” he says abruptly, without thinking. He considers that not thinking is the only way he’s going to get it out. “On top of the plateau, with Inoue-san and Kurosaki. And the Espada, Ulquiorra.”

“I remember that.” Chad folds his arms, and the sleeves of his gray windbreaker rustle. “We were fighting beneath you. I could feel Ichigo’s reiatsu from miles away.”

The light turns yellow, then red, and then the walk sign lights up. They wait for the final cars to pass and walk across the intersection in silence.

He’s not sure why Chad sent him the text, or why he bothered showing up. It’s not that he doesn’t – _enjoy_ the company, in a clinical sense, in that it’s a nice change from being alone. He’s just not sure what to do with it. It’s been a few days since they last saw each other, not in the least part because he’s been avoiding everyone. He doesn’t do it consciously, but he can feel himself slipping back into that zombie state, sometimes. Cook, clean, study, wash, sleep. He’s read three journals cover-to-cover.

The café Chad takes them to is a quaint little place, tucked away between a convenience store and an electronics shop. They order, sit, are served. Chad has some kind of French press running next to a glass of ice. Uryuu doesn’t even remember what he ordered, but he rips open a packet of sugar and stirs it into his drink.

Once the container has caught all of the coffee drips, Chad pours it over the ice. Drops of water condense on the surface of the glass.

“I didn't think you were the type to do this,” he observes idly.

“What?”

“Go out for coffee and a chat.”

“Hm.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Chad gives up and takes a sip from the glass, then sets it down in front of him thoughtfully, putting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands together. One of the things that hasn’t changed about him is the shaggy fringe of dark brown hair that makes it difficult to see his eyes.

Uryuu thinks to himself grimly that once upon a time he would have worried about being a good conversationalist, but nowadays he’s tired enough to be self-absorbed. _Stop wallowing,_ he says to himself, but it doesn’t lift the haze. _Stop wallowing._ The cup comes to his lips automatically. He cools it with a breath and drinks. _Swallow once, put the cup down. Raise a hand to adjust your glasses._ Routine, manageable.

“Have you been hunting Hollows?”

The question catches him off-guard.

“Well, Urahara-san takes care of it. I’m – studying.”

Chad snorts into his drink. “Are you giving it up?”

He searches for answers in the bottom of his cup. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You think Ichigo’s capable of handling all of Japan by himself?” Chad sounds amused, kind of. It’s mixed with something. He hopes he’s not reading condescension, but then again, it’s Chad, so he’s probably just projecting.

“I have a routine,” he says shortly. Chad’s intentions are good, it’s written all over his face, and he _knows,_ but Chad hasn’t been here. For months and months, he hasn’t been here. “I am – coping.”

“Describe it to me.” His friend is testing him, and he’s frankly not confident that he’s going to pass. Chad stirs his coffee with a spoon, comically small in his hand, and gives him a moment to respond.

It takes him _several_ moments to come up with a reply that makes sense.

“I put down the cross once I... got back. It doesn’t make sense to carry it anymore. I’m done with all of that, the politics, the power plays. The responsibility. The... killing. Now that I know what a Quincy is, I know I’m… not a Quincy. I’m at the head of my class at Rikadai, I have great prospects as a physical chemist. I’m a good cook, a good tailor, a decent son. That’s all I am. Not some kind of superhero.”

“You’re a good friend,” Chad says quietly.

That strikes him. It shouldn’t. He’s considered this group of misfits to be his friends for a while, now. He looks down at the smooth wood grain of the table, at the silhouettes of raindrops clinging to the glass front of the café. They trail across his folded hands and the white sleeves of his shirt as he stares.

Softer – “Uryuu. It matters. We can forget the names, the places, the times, but not who was there, what it looked like, or what came next. It’s our history. Our legacy. Something to pass on.”

“I had a legacy. Look where it got us.”

Chad is silent. He thinks Chad hasn’t seen Ryuuken in a long time. The Ishida family life has continued, believe it or not, behind closed doors. Their relationship is – better, if not repaired. They’ve shot at each other. Left the same organizations, renounced the same things. They have dinner once in a while. Nothing fancy, and he leaves half an hour afterward. They talk about normal things. His studies, Ryuuken’s work. Nothing about shinigami or Hollows or national politics. As far as he’s concerned, it’s the best it’s ever going to be. And he’s more or less fine with that.

His coffee is going cold. He studies the drifting cluster of bubbles making its way from one side of the mug to the other. Chad, in turn, studies him. It’s uncomfortable, but Chad isn’t interested in his comfort. He wants something. Uryuu isn’t sure what. Full disclosure? He’s disclosed almost everything. An emotional response? He doesn’t think he’s capable of a sincere one anymore. Reassurance, maybe. Something that will convince Chad that he’s doing fine. But what’s the point in talking about it when there’s nothing either of them can do? Everyone has to deal with their own problems, in their own time. He’s always been a bit neurotic, too stubborn to simply let go of things. This is the logical consequence.

Suspicions multiply inside of him until he has to open his mouth and let some of them out for fear of bursting. “Look, you don’t... have to feel sorry for me. Everyone who comes back from a war has to deal with this. And we were lucky – I was lucky – to come back at all. Isn’t that enough?”

Chad sighs, and drums his fingers on the table.

“I don’t pity you at all. You’re right. Everyone has to deal with this in their own way. But I don’t trust you to reach out to us if you feel like you’re just – spinning your wheels. That’s what I’m worried about.”

A spark of irritation flares up in his chest. It’s unfair, he knows, because Chad is the farthest you can get from patronizing, and he’s just trying to help, but he knows that they can’t help _but_ pity him and try to spare his feelings. Otherwise they’d get right to the point. _Ishida, you haven’t been talking to us as much. Ishida, you’ve been acting strangely. Ishida, Urahara-san said..._

“Well, don’t worry about it,” he says curtly, avoiding his friend’s eyes. “I’m an adult. I can handle myself. You can trust me to do that much.”

The soft sounds of Chad folding his arms and leaning back in his chair seem like claps of thunder in the quiet café. He stares resolutely at his coffee, and when he drinks from the mug he closes his eyes so he can’t see Chad’s expression. The flash of anger fades quickly and he doesn’t regret what he said, not really, but – he should have been kinder about it. And yet what’s left of his pride keeps him from apologizing.

“How have your studies been going?” Chad asks quietly. The other conversation is over. Uryuu is relieved, but also somehow disappointed. He lifts his gaze, but if Chad had a response to his outburst he’s carefully hidden it by now.

They talk for another hour, haltingly, and when they leave the café, the sun moves out from behind the white banks of cloud, colorless and bright. The rain glistens on the pavement, on the trees, on the windows, on the cars passing by. Everything is covered in silver; everything is shining and cold. Chad walks him back to his apartment, and when he turns to leave Uryuu can see three dark spots on the right sleeve of his shirt, imprints of raindrops like tears.


	3. vega, who descends

Minamikawase is a quiet neighborhood. He walks there sometimes to read by the river, sitting on a bench and poring over some old journal or textbook. The water is flat and its calm surface produces a shaky mirror image of the sky above.

Today, the sky is clear and blue and cloudless. The water is blue, too, rippling silver where the gentle breeze touches it. The sun beats down on them relentlessly. The sidewalk in front of them shimmers in the heat, and dips in the pavement collect light like water, reflecting fragments of the sky and trees. Kids race back and forth on the banks, riding bicycles and skateboards and kicking balls, a collection of scraped knees and shaggy haircuts.

They chat idly as they walk, looking for an unoccupied part of the bank to sit on where they won’t be bothered by a horde of tiny rascals on wheels, but it looks like it’s going to be a while before they get there. He doesn’t know what his friends have planned, if anything. Kurosaki still walks like a sullen teenager, hands stuffed in the pockets of his basketball shorts, shoulders slumped. Chad, as always, has perfect posture and towers above them both.

“Inoue says she’s going to be late,” Kurosaki says, scratching his shoulder. He glances sideways at Uryuu, as if to inform him specifically. “She’s going to bring Tatsuki with her.”

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say to that, so he nods and says “Okay.”

Kurosaki looks at him again, expectantly. Chad elbows him and he stumbles to the side.

_“Ow.”_

“Tch.”

They’ve been acting strangely this whole time. Or rather, Kurosaki has been acting weird around him, and Chad seems to be a co-conspirator of sorts. He’s been pretending not to notice, but he can’t say that he’s not curious about what they’re up to. In fact, he’s so curious that he’s been thinking about calling them out for the past fifteen minutes or so.

Before he can decide whether to do it or not, Kurosaki’s phone goes off. He has the decency to look embarrassed about his ringtone, which is the theme to “Ghost Bust” – they’ve _finally_ managed to get him hooked – and ducks his head when he answers.

“What’s up, Keigo? No, nothing right now, I’m out with Chad and Ishida. Nothing. _Actually_ nothing. Why, what are _you_ doing? ...You know what, forget I asked. If you want to leave early, you can always come hang out with us... Wow, I didn’t expect you to back out that fast. We’ll be by the river. I don’t know where. No. Just call me when you’re out, okay? Okay. Dude, shut up. Bye.” He flips his phone shut, shaking his head, and slips it into the pocket of his shorts. “So Keigo’s joining us later.”

“Okay,” Uryuu says again.

Kurosaki groans. “Man, Ishida, something’s up with you. _Okay_ this, _okay_ that. This isn’t how you normally act.”

“Well, you’ve been acting quite sneaky yourself,” he says sharply. “Should I be suspecting you of something, Kurosaki?”

“Who? _Me?_ Suspect me of what?”

He gives him a flat stare. “You’ve been looking at me sideways ever since we met up, especially when you talk about Inoue.”

“What? I have not.”

Chad puts on an innocent face when Uryuu points at him. “Also, Chad doesn’t seem to agree with whatever you’re doing, so you’d better tell me what it is.”

“I’m not up to anything at all,” Kurosaki insists. “I’m just. You know. Concerned.”

“Ah. _Concerned.”_ He folds his arms.

“Yeah. Like… you’ve been quiet lately.”

“I spend a lot of time being quiet, Kurosaki. You should try it out sometime.” His patience is up. “So what’s your problem?”

Chad touches Kurosaki’s shoulder and gives him a withering look. Kurosaki shrugs and gives a disgruntled sigh.

“Ichigo thinks that you like her. Inoue. For the record, I think so too, but he also thinks that you’re acting strangely because you’re conflicted about getting close to her when you don’t live in the same town anymore.”

Kurosaki sputters in the background and Uryuu stares at Chad, trying to ascertain whether what he heard was real or if the signals from his eyes and ears to his brain got somehow scrambled by the noon heat. He almost laughs. Sure, he’s been mooning after Orihime for years, but that’s probably one of the only things that hasn’t changed since their first year of high school. If he’s acting strangely, it’s because he’s changed while Kurosaki was away, and he says as much.

“We’ve spent a lot of time apart. Isn’t it natural that we’ve changed in the meantime?”

Chad’s eyebrows shoot up behind his fringe as if to say _That’s not what you told me last week._ Uryuu pretends he doesn’t notice. If Kurosaki wants to make a fuss, then he’ll let him.

But instead of pressing the issue, Kurosaki shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets again, looking away with a pensive expression. Chad hums disapprovingly, but that’s his last comment on the matter. It leaves his words hanging in the air, heavier than he wanted them to.

They walk for a while. He doesn’t know for how long. It could have been an hour, or fifteen minutes. The sun crawls toward the western horizon, and the way it hits the water makes it almost unbearable to look at. The banks steadily empty of children, and eventually they reach a spot where there are barely any skateboards to be heard. Kurosaki is the first one to go down, fast and reckless, arms oustretched and wheeling for balance on the incline. He follows, with Chad right behind him. The water glitters cheerfully, and laps at the brief, pebbled shore. Kurosaki takes off his shoes and rolls up the legs of his pants to his knees, then dials Orihime’s number and tells her where they are.

“You coming in, Ishida?” he asks over his shoulder as he shrugs off his shirt. Chad doesn’t bother and leaves his sandals on the bank, splashing into the water in his cargo shorts and t-shirt.

He shakes his head, tapping the book under his arm – a chemistry textbook.

Kurosaki makes a disgusted face. “I’m going to take that as a ‘maybe later.’”

Sitting down on the grass, he kicks off his shoes and opens the book to a chapter on benzenes. The covers of the book are warm from contact with his arm and side. He sweeps his hair out of his eyes and puts the fingers of his left hand on the page.

Eventually, he gets lost in the diagrams and tables and figures, only half-aware of the two friends talking and fighting in the water. With one hand he flips from page to page, and with the other he shades his eyes so that the glare of the sun doesn’t reflect into his eyes from the lenses of his glasses. It takes a while before he realizes that Kurosaki’s phone is ringing on the shore. Leaving the book open on the grass, he stretches and snatches up the worn flip phone from the ground.

“Hello?”

_“Kurosaki-kun? I’m down at the river now, where are you?”_

“Ah, it’s Ishida.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I thought I called Kurosaki-kun—”

“No, no! You did, I’m just answering his phone. Anyway, we’re near the tennis complex at the bend in the river. You know where that is?”

 _“Yes! I’m just a few minutes away. Don’t have too much fun without me!”_ She laughs, and he smiles in response even though she can’t see it. “ _See you soon, Ishida-kun!”_

She hangs up. He closes the phone and looks up to see Kurosaki gesturing at him.

“What did she say?” he calls. Chad kicks up a fan of water at him and he yelps as it sloshes over his legs, soaking his pants. “Asshole!”

“She says they’ll be here soon,” Uryuu replies, and goes back to his textbook. There’s a moment of silence before he hears another splash and a squawk of indignation.

True to her word, Orihime arrives within the next fifteen minutes, announcing her presence with a shout like the peal of a bell in the distance. He looks over to see her waving from the sidewalk, a plastic container in her other hand. Tatsuki and Chizuru follow behind her at a leisurely pace, chatting with each other. He can’t quite hear what they’re talking about, but Orihime looks over her shoulder when she overhears something Chizuru says and dissolves into a fit of giggles.

It’s hard to explain. Orihime is more than just _Orihime –_ she’s light, air, the sun. When Kurosaki despairs, she throws him a lifeline. When he loses faith, she picks it up and brushes it off and keeps it until he’s ready to take it back. She’s as bright as light, as necessary as air, as constant as the sun. He’s content to be near her, but he can’t help but wonder, sometimes, if it’s possible that she could be happy with him. He honestly doesn’t know. It’s better not to talk about it. She’s not shy. If she wants something, she’ll make it clear, even if she doesn’t say it aloud. And it’s clear that she doesn’t want him, at least, not in the way she looks at other people.

She leaps down the slope like a deer, friends in tow. Kurosaki splashes into the shallows to greet her.

“Kurosaki-kun!” she chirps.

“Inoue! I was wondering when you’d finally get here.”

“Well, I’m here now,” she says, slipping off her sandals. “How’s the water?”

“Fantastic,” he replies, and bends over to scoop some water up in his palms to fling at her. She shrieks, laughing, and chases after him, bent on revenge.

Tatsuki yells out a brief greeting before tugging off her tennis shoes and socks, dropping her bag on the grass. She runs to the water, whooping loudly. Chizuru, still in her blazer and slacks from work, sighs and sits down next to him with an air of gloom.

“Hello, Ishida-kun.” She flops down on her back, glasses askew. “I’m taking a nap. Please wake me up when this nightmare is over.”

He frowns, marking his place in his book with a finger. “What’s wrong, Honshou-san?”

“Everything,” she moans. “My _honey_ —” and here she uses the English word for emphasis – “is moving back to France! And Hime and Tatsuki just laugh at me! The world is cruel...”

Stifling a laugh, he pats her gingerly on the shoulder. Chizuru, from what he gathers, has fallen head-over-heels for a French exchange student.

“It’s not funny, Ishida.” She takes off her glasses and puts them on her stomach, letting her arms splay over the green grass. He watches as her face loses its dramatic tension and softens into shades of – he can’t quite tell, but it must be melancholy, even though she’s not frowning.

“Are you really in love with her?”

The question floats between them for a while. Chizuru stares at the sky, shifting her left arm up so she can put the back of her hand on her forehead.

“I think so,” she says, finally. “Oh, I don’t know. I kind of thought I would find someone when I went to the city… but I didn’t know what to do when I did.”

He doesn’t know what to say, so he just stays quiet. Chizuru doesn’t seem to notice, her eyes trained on the lone wisp of cloud drifting over them like a patch of featherdown. She’s always seemed so happy to him. He wonders what was so incredible about this girl that could upset such a cheerful disposition.

“What’s her name?”

Chizuru looks up at him, surprised. “Ah… Marie. Marie Comtois.”

“Is she a good person?”

“Of course! She’s sweet, and caring, and always excited about everything…”

“And you have her email?”

“Yes,” she sighs, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I guess we’ll still be in touch. And I’ve talked to her a lot since the semester ended.” She grimaces. “Does it sound like I’m overreacting?”

“Not if you really like her,” he says without thinking. “Loving someone should make you do things you never thought you would do.”

Laughing, she pushes him with one hand. “I didn’t know you were such a sap! I always thought you were – I don’t know – the rude, practical kind of guy.”

Her comment makes him feel strange. Slightly anxious. He looks toward the river, where Tatsuki and Orihime are knee-deep in the water, talking to each other while Chad and Kurosaki are collecting rocks to skip later. He tries not to stare, but the way her hair falls around her face, her perfect smile, the way she covers her mouth when Tatsuki says something funny...

“You really like her, don’t you?”

He looks back at Chizuru, who looks less sad now and more thoughtful.

“Oh, don’t give me that face. You’ve had a huge crush on her since freshman year. I keep an eye out for Hime, you know? Lots of guys stare at her. Some girls, too. She’s the best. That’s why I have to beat up everyone who looks at her the wrong way.” She props herself up on her elbows, pointing at him with her folded-up glasses. “Now, I’m not saying that you’d be good for her, because Hime deserves perfection! She should have a caring and beautiful lady to wait on her hand and foot... But she’s smart, and if she actually likes you, I probably won’t break your face in. But that’s her decision, not mine.”

The force of her little speech catches him off-guard, and he finds himself scrambling to react in a way that won’t make him look like a total idiot.

“Um... thank you?”

“Don’t thank me. Just watch your step.” She shakes the glasses at him, then presses them over her mouth to stifle a yawn. “Now, I was serious about that nap. Don’t wake me up unless my life is in danger, okay?”

The sun is sinking huge and orange-gold above the buildings and trees when Keigo and Mizuiro arrive. Chizuru is still asleep, snoring softly, and Tatsuki and Orihime sit at the bank, dipping their feet into the water and talking softly. Kurosaki and Chad wave from farther away, almost silhouetted in the light of sunset. Soon they are all halfway into darkness, moving against the shimmering gold water. Out of the corner of his eye, they look like shadow puppets, dancing in front of flickering lantern-light. He turns the last page of the chapter, skimming over the diagrams, and picks a blade of grass to mark his place.

Orihime looks up with a smile when he sits down next to her, and his heart jumps a little.

“Are you finished studying, Ishida-kun?”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “Even I can only read for so long.”

Tatsuki splashes some water at him with her foot. “Glad you finally tunnelled out, bookworm.”

They talk about nothing in particular for a while. School, friends, the weather. Movies that he hasn’t seen are described to him in what is proably wildly inaccurate detail. When he brings up the subject of Marie Comtois, Orihime frowns and Tatsuki shrugs.

“It’s very sad, but I think they can make it work,” Orihime says, putting a finger to her chin thoughtfully. “Although I think it would be better for Chizuru if she met someone who could stay here in Japan.”

“What can you do?” Tatsuki adds. “It’s like a test, to see if it can work. But I wish she’d had other girlfriends before. I think she feels like she won’t ever find true love, and I don’t want her to make herself miserable trying to keep a relationship together over two whole continents.”

He nods, reluctantly. The topic changes, the conversation moves on, but his mind lingers. Wonders how much distance it takes to break the thread that connects two people. What’s the distance between Karakura and Bunkyou? An hour, but between their campuses, maybe fifteen minutes by train. And they’ve been so busy that they haven’t seen each other at all. The dense forest of buildings between them might as well be the distance from Japan to France.

Maybe he’s overthinking. Probably. He listens to Tatsuki and Orihime discuss new restaurants and just enjoys the moment – it’s been a long time since he’s done anything like this.

The boys, having arrived at some kind of decision, splash back to shore. Keigo and Mizuiro clutch wet skipping stones in their hands and dump them on the grass, wiping their hands on their shirts. Kurosaki scoops his pile up from the bank and carries them back to the others; Chad has been keeping his stones in the pockets of his shorts.

They’re surrounded by dripping wet legs for a few minutes as they settle down.

“Hey, Tatsuki,” Kurosaki says, nudging her back with his foot.

“Don’t get water on me, Ichigo,” she warns, turning around. “You might be some hotshot shinigami who saved the world or some shit, but I can still kick your ass.”

He raises his unburdened hand in surrender. “No need to get huffy about it. I was gonna ask if you all wanted to _DUEL.”_

All four of them present their piles of rocks and strike poses suspiciously like Don Kanonji. Orihime laughs. Tatsuki tries her best to look unamused, but he can see her lips twitching.

“I’ll take you on, punk,” she declares, and stands up, cracking her knuckles. “You’ve only got one chance to back down!”

Orihime declines the epic rock-skipping duel and sits down between him and Chizuru, who has started to drool a little bit. Orihime giggles and takes a tissue pack out from her pocket, carefully wiping the corner of Chizuru’s mouth.

“She’s out cold,” he observes quietly.

“It’s been a long day for her. She has a summer job in Shinjuku. That’s why we were so late – we were waiting for her to commute back to Karakura.”

He hums in acknowledgement, then lies down on the grass. The blades scratch at his neck and bare arms, but he keeps his eyes trained on the sky. It burns orange just over the tops of the apartment blocks, turning the trees black. The sky fades backwards into dark blue, passing through shades of bright purple. He can already see Venus gleaming in the sky, a pinprick of white light hanging just to the side of the crescent moon. Below, he can hear the sound of rocks splashing in the river, and Kurosaki whooping in excitement.

Orihime lies back, too. “It’s a beautiful sunset,” she says.

He can’t think of anything to say. “Yeah.”

“Do you think—” She hesitates.

“What?”

There’s a pause while she gathers her thoughts.

“Do you ever think,” she begins again, “about where we’ll be in ten years? Or maybe twenty?”

He can’t say that he hasn’t. They’re all drifting apart already.

“Sometimes.”

“Kurosaki-kun is going to stay here, obviously. Tatsuki might go to Germany, she’s going to study to be a physical therapist... Chizuru might move to France to be with Marie!” She perks up at that. “Sado-kun says he’ll probably be going all around the world to study geology. Mizuiro is going to get married and move away, or at least that’s what he said, and Keigo is going to go into television production, so who knows where he’ll end up.” She seems to be counting on her fingers. “I’m probably going to do research in Tokyo. So that just leaves you, Ishida-kun.”

He hasn’t really thought about where he’ll be in ten years, much less twenty. He’s been having difficulty seeing past the end of the month ever since their last visit to the Seireitei, to be honest. But he concentrates, thinks about his degree, about where he wants to be.

“I’ll be in a laboratory somewhere,” he guesses. “I don’t know. Maybe in China. Or Germany. Or America. I’ll probably stay in Japan, though.”

He folds his arms under his head and looks over at her. She’s staring at the sky, brow pinched. Shun Shun Rikka twinkles on her collar.

“I guess that’s true. It’s just that I thought we would stay here forever, you know? But maybe that’s kind of stupid.” She sighs and closes her eyes.

His heart twists, and he blurts out, “It’s not stupid. Karakura is important, and not just because it’s the jyuureichi. We grew up here. It’s a part of us.”

She opens her eyes again, looks at him, and smiles.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

His face burns and he looks away, focusing on the pale, waning moon hanging in the purple-orange sky.

“Hey, Ishida-kun…?”

“What is it, Inoue-san?”

“…ah, never mind. It’s nothing.”

He watches the silhouettes of his friends as they skip stones. Shadows bending, turning, again and again, against the dim sparkle of the water.

The sun sets, eventually, and they wake up Chizuru to go get teppanyaki in the city, but when he walks home, textbook under his arm, he realizes that Orihime’s not the only one who thinks the way she does. They all act like this is going to last forever, long, luxurious summer days spent in each others’ company, but it has to end eventually, and they’ll be scattered to the winds like so much dust. 

He wonders, turning the key in his door, if they’ll still talk to him in even five years.

* * *

22:44 HONSHOU C  
I think I really do love her. I think… I’m happy.

22:45 HONSHOU C  
Thanks for being a friend. :)

23:12 (ME)  
Best of luck.


	4. visitation, revision

He has dinner with Ryuuken most weekends, one of several rituals that they practice for the sake of the family name. The event is signalled by a quick call the night before, a curt exchange of time and place. They usually meet someplace downtown. Very rarely, Ryuuken offers to cook. 

For some reason he spends the entire afternoon full of nervous energy. He heads to three different craft supply shops, searching for a slant-shank embroidery foot for his sewing machine, and paces up and down the aisles investigating the notions and appliqués. His eyes roam restlessly over the selections of zippers, rhinestones, buttons, and decorative fringe. He usually debates fiercely over the items that he chooses, weighing price against quality and trying to find the best compromise, but today he just looks for a familiar logo and pulls stuff off of the rack without thinking. By the time he finishes, his bag is fuller than he intended it to be. It won’t be good for his budget, but he currently can’t bring himself to care.

His feet turn toward his old neighborhood seemingly of their own accord. He doesn’t have any particular desire to be there, but he doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of _not_ going, so he goes.

The sun has set halfway by the time he reaches the front door of their – _his_ – house. He takes the spare key out of his pocket, unlocks the door, and steps inside. It’s hotter indoors. Ryuuken has always been adamant about keeping the thermostat relatively close to the temperature outdoors, especially during summer. The temperature swings lower the immune system’s ability to defend against pathogens, or something like that, and it also happened to save money. It made for a lot of sleepless, sweltering summer nights as a child. He can hear the stovetop fan running in the kitchen. The light in the hall is on, too.

“I’m home,” he calls, taking off his shoes.

“Close the door behind you. I don’t want insects getting in.”

 _Typical._ He shuts the door and walks down the hallway to the kitchen. It hasn’t been updated in years. The stove is a very early electric model and the back left burner no longer works. State of the art when he was a child, not so much now. Ryuuken’s briefcase lies on the counter next to the reusable bag he keeps around for groceries, and his tie is rolled up next to it. It’s a strangely informal sight. He’s used to seeing the black leather case open on the desk in Ryuuken’s study, or in his hand as he leaves for work. He barely remembers his father like he is now: barefoot, leaning over the stove, the sleeves of his work shirt rolled up, lifting the lids from pots to check their contents, tasting methodically. The air smells like sesame oil.

Uryuu moves wordlessly to the drawers, setting the table in the dining room for two. He can hear dials being switched off and the contents of pans being scraped onto plates as he works.

Ryuuken’s palate is generally undiscerning, the result of a frenetic work environment and decades’ worth of fast meals slipped in between long hours of running back and forth between the various wings of the hospital. From what Kurosaki Isshin tells him, his mother used to do most of the cooking before she died. He remembers eating well, but he can’t recall if Ryuuken is a better or worse chef. It doesn’t matter, really. Tonight’s meal is some kind of soup with lotus root, fish, and carrots in a translucent broth, stir-fried eggs and tomato, and rice.

The quiz, as he likes to call it, begins early tonight.

“You’re unsettled,” Ryuuken asks. It’s a question that sounds like a statement. Ryuuken loves using those. He debates for a moment whether to respond, since questions should sound like questions, but he doesn’t feel like arguing over this tonight.

“What does that mean?”

Ryuuken looks directly at him. Anyone else would be frowning, but his face is perfectly blank. “You’re distracted.”

“From what?” He picks up a piece of lotus root from his bowl of soup. “It’s summer vacation. Besides, I’m not your responsibility.”

“Aren’t you?”

Something strikes him about this and he bites back his response to look, really _look_ at Ryuuken. The rolled-up sleeves, the strands of hair sticking to his forehead, the fleck of cigarette ash on his collar. He’s practically dishevelled, and for a man whose relentless obsession with details earned him a career in medicine, it’s disturbing.

“You’re unsettled, too,” he says pointedly. Ryuuken looks at him sharply at first, but then his expression changes into resignation. The only times he’s ever seen the man tired are years in the past, fleeting glimpses of exhaustion at three in the morning. Ryuuken never reveals _anything._

“So I am.”

He doesn’t have any idea how to respond so he doesn’t, and finishes the meal without saying anything else.

Usually he leaves almost immediately afterwards after helping to put the dishes away, but Ryuuken doesn’t move from his seat once they’re both done eating. All of these breaks in routine are genuinely unsettling. His mind flutters between plausible scenarios – has his old man finally lost it? He’d thought so, once, in the chamber beneath the hospital, but even then his face was impassive and cold, completely controlled. He still has that scar, nineteen millimeters away from his heart, small and white and smooth. Or maybe this is an impostor who has disguised himself as Ryuuken. He’s almost certain it’s the latter. The man, whoever he is, takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, thumbing a single white cylinder from it and placing one end in his mouth before fishing out the lighter and flicking the flint a few times. A small yellow flame appears, and soon the room smells like burning tobacco.

White smoke curls from his mouth as he closes his eyes. Then he speaks: “Did you visit your mother for Obon?”

He’s taken aback. He did, in fact, visit the cemetery, but he didn’t expect Ryuuken to care. He doesn’t have time to decide whether to tell him or not, because the man sweeps on.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s your business. Although you’ve always been sentimental to a fault. Kanae was like that, too.”

He realizes that he’s been holding his breath, and lets it out slowly. It’s only the second time he can remember her name being spoken in this house. Ryuuken’s gaze is distant, and his brow is slightly furrowed. The cigarette burns slowly between his fingers, and he taps it against the edge of his empty plate without seeming to realize it, knocking off the ash.

“We always made a fuss about the _echt_ lines and the _gemischt_ lines. Ridiculous. We were dying off. We tried to style every marriage as a political marriage, but none of them meant anything. There were just a handful of us left. Utterly without pragmatism. Kanae recognized that, on some level. Masaki-san even more so. I was...” And he puffs on the cigarette again, gesturing at nothing. “Stubborn. Obsessed with the _echt_ line. And after Masaki-san there was no more _echt_ line with which to _be_ obsessed.”

 _“Kurosaki_ Masaki?” That would explain a lot.

“Don’t be obtuse, Uryuu,” he says flatly. “You already know that Ichigo is _gemischt,_ like you. Or did you think he got his _Blutkräfte_ from Isshin?”

Ryuuken doesn’t continue right away after the interruption, looking away and dropping the butt of the now-spent cigarette onto the plate, where its ember flickers helplessly. He’s filled with some kind of strange tension. Uryuu considers the idea that he might be on stimulants. It would certainly account for the twitchiness and irritability.

Katagiri Kanae has never been a topic of conversation in this house. Ryuuken spoke about her just once, when Uryuu was too young to grasp anything but her name. His grandfather was the one who answered all of his questions, in fact. There are pictures of her scattered around here and there, but her things have been packed away somewhere secret, and he’s not about to ask where they are.

Ryuuken breaks the silence softly.

“Even if you don’t believe anything else I tell you, believe that I loved her. I left the Quincy empire for _her.”_ He leans forward, staring Uryuu straight in the eyes. “She was too kind. Too merciful for her own good. You didn’t know any of this and you almost died to avenge her, all because you had a few faint memories of how good she was to you. Because you love her, too.”

His unease turns to irritation in a split second. He can’t pin down what’s rubbing him the wrong way – maybe the fact that Ryuuken is trying to use his mother to connect with him, as if the memory of her absence doesn’t also bring up others of _him,_ unsmiling, silent, of long days inside an empty house. _Too little, too late,_ he thinks fiercely.

“Of course I do,” Uryuu snaps, refusing to look away. “I’m surprised you don’t think I’m foolish for that, too.”

His father’s brow furrows in an all-too-familiar way. _“Foolish_ is losing your abilities to a shinigami. _Foolish_ is recklessly charging through a land full of monsters like some kind of berserker because of a puerile infatuation. You’ve ignored my advice at every turn and paid a price each time. You were supposed to live life free of those kinds of consequences, but you chose this path.”

That _stings._ Ryuuken had issued an ultimatum, to abandon his friends and leave them to die or be helpless to save them anyway. All of his struggles came at a cost, but that’s what war _is,_ or at least what it’s supposed to be. It’s sacrificing your own health and safety to protect people. It never gives, only takes away. And he knew that, and Ryuuken knows that, but why won’t he say it? Just a word of comfort without condescension, so that he can see that his father’s love is unconditional, for once. He grits his teeth, then fires back.

“Since when has anything like that mattered to you? You keep saying you watch over me, but you’ve never offered anything unless you can use it against me later.” He watches for a reaction, but it doesn’t come, so he pushes further. “Even when everything was on the line, you barely lifted a finger to help.”

Ryuuken’s face is dark. _“‘Barely lifted a finger?’_ I directly enabled you to kill that monster. Do you think I enjoyed mutilating my wife’s corpse and cutting her heart open to harvest a damn blood clot? It was a necessity, not a choice, and one that I handed over to you because you decided to carry out a suicide mission to avenge her!” There’s something in his voice, raw and uncomfortable, and for a moment he thinks he’s stepped over a line, but he’s not done lancing the wound yet.

“It wasn’t any more a suicide mission than accepting your offer to restore my _Blutkräfte!_ No one’s ever come closer to killing me than you have and you’ve never acknowledged that, so how the hell am I supposed to trust you?”

“Despite what you seem to think, I did not _enjoy_ shooting my own son in the chest, nor do I _enjoy_ seeing you suffer, especially when the causes are completely under your control. I have never laid a hand on you except when it was medically necessary. What about that can you not comprehend? Are you so bullheaded that you can’t see how I have provided for you time and again?”

 _“I thought I was dead!”_ He’s sure he’s never raised his voice like this, not in the first thirteen years of his life. He feels sickeningly free. “I thought I was dead, I thought you shot me in the heart because I wasn’t strong enough to get through your bullshit sparring routine! I never thought you actually hated me until then. Maybe you were apathetic, or disinterested, but it felt like you were finally getting rid of a pest. Is that how you see me? As a burden?” _Do you want me to hate you so you can hate me back?_ He’s not sure whether he’s arguing anymore or just pleading for Ryuuken to show some sign, to acknowledge the things he’s failed to do. In his head, he knows better than to expect anything, but his heart aches fiercely and hopes against hope.

In his wildest dreams, his father softens and apologizes, and Uryuu tosses aside a decade of resentment and loneliness to help build the bridge between them. But they’re both proud, and they’re both stubborn, and he still can’t tell what Ryuuken is thinking. He is so lost and he thinks belatedly that he may be well on the way to scuttling their relationship entirely.

“You have no idea how I see you,” Ryuuken says tersely. “And that’s a shame. I have to wonder if you’re this short-sighted in all of your relationships.”

The words ring in his head as he stares at his father in disbelief. He’d always believed on some level that Ryuuken didn’t really _mean_ the things he said, or that he just didn’t understand what kind of effect they would have. After all, he was a doctor, and doctors had to deliver all kinds of news impartially, or risk emotional burnout. He’d wanted to believe it didn’t really extend to him, too. But if this is really how it is, he has no idea how to begin repairing their relationship. Maybe it was always like this. He’s not kind or gentle or understanding enough to make this work, and Ryuuken doesn’t even understand that there’s work to be done. In his eyes, the arrowhead should have been enough.

He turns and strides out of the room, old floorboards creaking as he beelines for the front hall. At the doorway, he stuffs his feet into his shoes, hoists his bag over his shoulder, and contemplates slamming the door behind him. He doesn’t. He leaves it open; moths are fluttering around the butter-yellow light of the lamp. The sky is black, lit only with a few dim constellations.

Ryuuken doesn’t call after him. Not that he expects him to, but the night is strangely silent when he gathers the reishi under his feet and bounds back across the city, too fast for anyone to follow. The mild air turns freezing against his face, and his legs burn with the effort. He wants a chase, a confrontation. His skin is itching for a fight. But his father doesn’t follow, and he is alone, vaulting over the rooftops. His head is buzzing with a thousand insignificant thoughts, like a cloud of gnats, but his heart is pounding. When he opens the door to his apartment, a car passes by on the street below and casts a shifting frame of light into the room. It slides silently across the walls, and his shadow moves with it, too.

He goes to his bedroom, flipping the light on, and stands at the sewing machine, emptying the contents of his bag onto the desk it stands on. Two five-hundred-meter spools of sixty-weight two-ply mercerized white cotton thread, one two-hundred-and-fifty-meter spool of forty-weight two-ply mercerized navy blue cotton thread, one plastic replacement bobbin, a set of five universal needles in different sizes, a used embroidery foot with a slant shank, twenty-four inches of white separating zipper with aluminum teeth, and his receipt from the shop. He sorts the thread, needles, and zipper out into the drawers of the desk, replaces the broken bobbin with the new one, leaves the shank to the side of the machine and slips the receipt into an envelope with the rest of the month’s expense records.

When he’s thinking about something, or just stressed, he cleans. Does chores. It’s part of why his apartment is always so neat, why his shirts are always laundered and his collars always starched. It’s like meditation, almost. He focuses on his hands and the task in front of him, letting his brain compile his thoughts until it figures something out. It’s become a habit, now, almost mechanical, and he can feel his frustration being converted into lactic acid in his muscles. The cloud of gnats begins to separate and condense into coherent thoughts. He scrubs at the bowl of the bathroom sink, and after he’s washed the last of the dried toothpaste down the drain, he goes back to his darkened living room and sinks down on the couch to think.

The words follow him: _You’re unsettled._ He’s felt strange for a few months now, more lethargic, more prone to angry outbursts. His dreams follow him around during the day, latching onto certain memories. But it hasn’t interfered with his studies or his daily routines. He’s been managing. If Ryuuken is right in his suspicions, which he grudgingly accepts as the suspicions of a medical professional, then it makes sense to interpret this as a mild form of battle fatigue. They all have it, or have had the potential for developing it since the Winter War. He’s surprised that Ichigo isn’t affected the worst out of all of them, but then again, what does he know? They’ve barely spoken for the past few months.

Ryuuken may very well have his best interests in mind, but has no idea how to communicate them except through – diagnosing him, in a manner of speaking. He reflects on Ryuuken’s dishevelled appearance, his uncharacteristically fast cadence and urgent tone. He doesn’t know what to make of it, really. And, if he’s honest, he doesn’t really care right now. Staring at the ceiling, he wonders if tonight was an attempt at reconciliation. If so, Ryuuken butchered it magnificently. And maybe Uryuu did his fair share of wrecking everything, too, by expecting him to react like someone he’s not. But what is he supposed to do? Go back to being the kid who just took in everything his father said, even if it hurt, in hopes that he would understand it someday? He hasn’t been that kid for six or seven years now. And he’s not going to twist himself back into that shape just for one person.

More quietly: why did he have to ruin this balance between them? Their lives have been intersecting without conflict for the past few months. Practically paradise. Gone, now.

He’s fallen into a light doze when his cell phone buzzes in his pocket and startles him awake. He looks at the number, squinting against the brightness of the display. It’s not Ryuuken – it’s Kurosaki. _Why would he call me at this time of night?_ he wonders briefly before flipping it open.

“Hello?”

_“Heeey, Ishida-kun! Sorry to call so late! I was going to ring you earlier, but you know how things are at the clinic.”_

Kurosaki Isshin, then. “Kurosaki-san? I don’t want to be rude, but why are you calling?”

_“Well, I wanted to invite you over for dinner this weekend. I’ve already invited Inoue-chan and Sado-kun, so I’m just waiting on you!”_

That can’t be it. “Kurosaki-san, Ichigo normally tells me about these things. If you want to talk about something else, please be straightforward with me.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a moment, and then Kurosaki’s father replies in a much more serious tone.

_“All right. Just don’t hang up after I say this, because it’s important.”_

He’s tempted to refuse, but he keeps his suspicions at bay. “I won’t.”

 _“Before you ask, yes, your father did ask me to speak with you. But I’m not going to say what he told me to say, because I have a feeling it’s not going to help.”_ Isshin pauses, then sighs. _“Ryuuken... has been having a difficult time at the hospital. I’m not going to burden you with all of the details – it’s mostly jargon, you know – but he’s been worried sick ever since he found out about the whole Wandenreich business.”_

He shuts his mouth before he says something rash, and thinks hard about what he’s going to say next. Isshin has nothing to do with the _situation_ between him and his father, strictly speaking, but anything he says might be relayed back to Ryuuken as forgiveness. It might be vindictive of him, but if Ryuuken wants him to be disciplined, he might as well use it to inconvenience him.

“I’m not interested in his problems,” he says eventually. “Thank you for telling me, Kurosaki-san, but I don’t see why…”

 _“He’s trying to reconcile with you,”_ Isshin interrupts. _“At least, that’s how I see it. He nearly watched you die in a situation he could have prevented. I know he’s a cold man, and neither of us have been particularly good fathers to our sons, but he... cares. In his own way.”_

If he closes his eyes he can hear more than silence in his apartment – the drip of the leaking faucet, the humming and popping of the water pipes, the rumble of the air conditioner, the mutter of an idling engine in the parking lot. Isshin is anxiously silent on the other end of the line.

He knows Ryuuken _cares_ about him, whatever that means. The same way he cares about death or a patient with a disease he’s unprepared to handle; something halfway between a hypothetical and reality. Something distant, but probably inevitable. A localized case of philanthropy. Blood has always been important to Ryuuken, whether he as a boy indoctrinated with eugenic philosophy or a man grown looking over the results of a serum panel. So Ryuuken _cares,_ is obligated to care, but he does so too distantly to matter. He loves, but like Mars, or Orion, from somewhere above. Of course a father cares about his son. He also cares about politics, bills, gasoline prices. Also loves his profession, his neighborhood, his country. Indiscriminately, conceptually, unconsciously. Why should a son be given special treatment? What does blood even mean to someone who’s spent long hours arm-deep inside a stranger’s stomach trying to keep them alive?

Isshin clears his throat, takes Uryuu’s silence for irritation.

_“Ishida-kun –”_

“Thank you for calling me, Kurosaki-san, but I would prefer not to talk about my father right now,” he says, keeping his voice firm but polite.

 _“...Ah. Well, I suppose it’s none of my business anyway.”_ He laughs, a little too loudly. _“I wasn’t joking about dinner, though.”_

“Tell Ichigo I’ll be there.”

_“Wonderful! I’m three for three! That’ll show the little brat, his old man is still hip and cool~!”_

“Goodbye, Kurosaki-san.”

_“Goodbye, Ishida-kun! Please come around at six!”_

Kurosaki’s father hangs up, and the phone beeps softly. In the blue darkness, the living room fills up with the detritus of small sounds. Every so often, the light coming through his window moves across his wall as a car passes by, like a consoling hand. The cloud of gnats is gone, but his head fills with water instead, clear and cold and heavy. He takes his glasses off and puts them on the table, closes the cell phone in his hand and places it next to the glasses.

He appreciates it. He really does. Kurosaki Isshin is a man of action, of dedication. It’s apparent in how he raised his son. And he would absolutely never let him have the satisfaction of knowing this, but those qualities are the ones that make him respect Ichigo, not just as a friend, or a warrior, but as a person. He has integrity. He cares deeply and with a frightening, single-minded intensity. He has almost no sense of self-preservation and his first instinct is always to behave with honor. He’s a good man, through and through. Uryuu sighs, and leans back on the couch until he’s staring at the ceiling, resting his head on the arm. The fingertips of his right hand brush the floor.

Ryuuken’s policy has always been to let him learn lessons the hard way. Why is he being so protective now? He’d shot him in the chest once. A few millimeters off and Uryuu would have been dead. Is it because he’d seen someone else try to kill him? Because he couldn’t control the danger this time? Because this time it was someone else beating the hell out of his son out of hatred, and it was his right to do it out of love? He’s being spiteful, he knows, but he wishes Ryuuken could have made it easier on them both. He wishes it didn’t take him almost dying to get Ryuuken to show a bit of vulnerability. He wishes he’d learned how to do it himself before all this had happened.

He’s been lucky to have fallen in with them. With Ichigo and Chad and Orihime. To have something more than his Quincy pride to fall back on once it was all over. To have people who chase after him when he doesn’t know what to do. It’s good. That much is good. He wishes he knew what to do for them in return, but he has a feeling that other people are already doing much more than he can – Tatsuki, Chizuru, Keigo, Mizuiro. He supposes that the only thing he can do now is to stay out of trouble. At least, the kind of trouble they’ve been fighting all these years.

Uryuu falls asleep to the restless murmuring of the apartment. Sleep is deep and dreamless, and he doesn’t wake until sunlight comes through the kitchen window and falls on the backs of his eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blutkräfte – Blood powers, lit. “blood force;” I extrapolated from Superkräfte, “superpowers.” I imagine the Quincy have German terms for lots of things that the Bleach universe doesn't directly refer to.


	5. lightning over karasu river

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Daihinmin is essentially President/Scum. Refer to Fruits Basket.  
> 2) Ishida makes reference to the Tanabata (for me, Qi Xi) legend of Orihime and Hikoboshi.

He watches Kurosaki inspect the ancient backup generator by the light of his cell phone screen, fingers curled around the keypad like it’s the handle of a torch. The soft glow of the screen reveals rust spots. And… more rust spots. The generator seems to be more rust than machine. 

“No way we’re getting this working,” he says to Urahara. “It looks like it’s from pre-war times. Man, I knew you were old, sandal-hat, but I never knew you were so cheap.”

Urahara ignores the jab and snaps his fan shut with a dramatic sigh. “It can’t be helped. We’ll have to rough it by firelight, kids. Tessai, please get me some matches! The candles are in the third aisle on the right.”

The rain thunders down outside, _shhhh,_ broken by the crash of thunder now and then, _KA-KHOOM._ It sounds like a sheet snapping in the wind on a clothesline. Urahara’s high, narrow windows are dark, but the light of Kurosaki’s cell phone reveals rivulets of water cascading down the glass, edged in blue-silver. Almost the color of reiryoku, poured from one of his silver tubes. The light wanders as Kurosaki bends down to take one last look at the generator with Chad, talking in a low voice, and the windows are black again. Another wandering light appears as Tessai pulls out a tiny flashlight from his apron and goes into one of the back rooms after clicking it on. Urahara, in turn, gestures to the aisle with the candles. Orihime takes him by the arm and pulls him forward. In his surprise, he almost trips and falls face-first onto the floor.

“Inoue-san—!”

They fumble their way into the aisle. It’s difficult to hear each other in the store front over the drumming of the rain. He ends up bumping elbows with Orihime in the half-light as he stoops to grab some of the bigger candles from the bottom shelves.

“Sorry,” he calls over the noise.

“It’s all right. I don’t think any of us can see very well. I wonder if Urahara-san has anything that would give us night vision?” 

“If he did, I don’t think we’d need the candles.”

“Huh. I guess you’re right… Should I bring the pine-scented candles or the cinnamon ones?” She picks up one jar in each hand, thin wrists bending under the weight. He resists the urge to take them from her. After all, his arms are already full. “I guess the pine-scented ones. Cinnamon is a winter smell. Smelling winter when it’s summer would be kind of like time travel, huh?”

“In a way, I guess.”

Orihime smiles at him. It’s an odd smile. She looks happy, but his heart aches for her anyway. He knows she isn’t really happy. Her eyes are distant, and there’s something in them that dims her bright gaze. Like clouds, far away, faint blue bruises on the horizon, promising – something. A gray rain in the distance, almost like mist, pouring over fields of purple lavender and yellow canola. Her lips curve up and her eyes are sparkling right there in front of his face, but she is somewhere else. He wants to know why, and where, but his mouth won’t form the words. She deserves to be happy and whole. He looks at her like a sailor looks at a lighthouse. Even her name is poetry to him. Orihime, on the other side of the river. Orihime, the shuttle that passes through the loom. Orihime, so far above him, shining when everything else is darkness. He’s sure that the others see her this way, too.

The moment passes. Orihime, just Orihime, puts the cinnamon candle back on the shelf and picks up a few more pine-scented ones, and half-turns toward the back of the shop. She stops, looks back at him.

“Ishida-kun,” she says softly.

“What is it?”

“I… missed you. I missed everyone, really, but… Todai and Rikadai are pretty close together. I’m sorry we didn’t talk much.”

“It’s okay,” he replies automatically. He’s not sure if he means it. “You – we were both busy. University is much more challenging than high school, isn’t it?”

She looks like she’s about to argue with him, but instead she just nods and turns around again.

When she doesn’t think people are looking, she doesn’t smile as much. He’s caught a glimpse of her set jaw and the hint of crow’s feet around her eyes. Kurosaki has them, too. The only well-adjusted one among them seems to be Chad, and even then, in light of what he disclosed to him at the café, that might just be wishful thinking. What are they, really? Just a couple of kids, eighteen and nineteen. Friends, family, caretakers, protectors, confidants – traitors.

He bites the inside of his lip and walks behind her.

They light the candles on a low table in the back room. Ururu and Jinta went to sleep just before midnight. Uryuu doubts they even noticed the power going out. They have pallets of their own laid out on the floor, and their interrupted game of daihinmin is laid out on the table in six piles of playing cards, illuminated by the dancing candlelight.

Urahara shakes the match out after lighting the last candle. They’re bright and smokeless, banishing the shadows to the corners of the room. Uryuu watches their silhouettes wavering on the wall for a moment, then returns to his hand of cards. They remind him of the river at sunset. The game moves quickly, punctuated with dialogue that snaps playfully between them like firecrackers in a pail, but Uryuu’s mind is somewhere else.

This shop is full of memories. Just a few years’ worth, but they are potent, nonetheless. Tonight they seem to parade through his mind in vivid color. At the forefront, so clear he can almost swap it out for the reality before him, he sees them all together: Orihime, Kurosaki, Chad, Renji, Rukia, Urahara, Yoruichi, Ururu, Jinta, sitting on the mats or perched on the boxes of miscellany stacked against the walls, leaning on the table, or with backs to the wall. He can’t remember what they were talking about, so their mouths move without audio, like a silent film. He remembers how he felt, though. For an instant, so close that he can almost feel it, he remembers what it was like before this. And it almost feels good. Wasn’t there a time where an argument with Kurosaki could make him angry for days? When Chad’s advice made him feel confident and genuine? When he hung on Orihime’s every smile?

But this room is thousands of miles away in time. The years have etched new lines on all of their faces like a sculptor taking a knife to clay. Their shoulders are more square, Kurosaki’s in particular, as if they are expecting a weight to fall on them at any moment. They are older, wiser, more cunning. Tired, even if they try to conceal it beneath banter and swift smiles. What will become of them? Orihime’s words ring in his head.

_It’s just that I thought we would stay here forever, you know?_

“Double sixes.” Chad lifts the cards from his hand and tosses them onto the growing pile. Uryuu pulls two sevens from his hand and places them on top. His game has been suffering due to his distraction, and he has the second-largest hand of cards in the group.

Kurosaki groans. “Oi, Ishida, are you paying attention? A seven and an eight don’t beat two sixes.”

He holds off on the retort that lances to the tip of his tongue as he checks the cards he put down. Kurosaki is right, unfortunately. He’s mistakenly put down an eight.

“Hm.” Swiftly replacing the card with the correct one, he slots the eight back between the six and the two nines.

“What are you thinking about?”

The question comes so suddenly and without any preface that it catches him off-guard for a moment, and he flails for time.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re thinking about something, aren’t you, Ishida-kun?” Orihime is smiling, although it’s half-hidden behind the fan of her cards. She’s infuriatingly good at daihinmin and is currently in the lead with four cards left.

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re not playing very well,” Urahara says before putting his cards in. There’s just a hint of amusement in his voice.

“I didn’t—! Ah, well...” Orihime giggles. “It’s true, though.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything,” he says.

Kurosaki can’t beat Urahara’s cards and passes his turn to Tessai in exasperation. “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re one to talk.”

Chad snorts and throws down a two, beginning the next round with a jack.

He lets his mouth run on autopilot, trading jabs with Kurosaki while Orihime laughs and Chad and Tessai exchange long-suffering looks. This is… nice. He missed this during the semester. It’s nice to have somewhere to go that isn’t populated by strangers or ghosts, or isn’t empty altogether. He almost forgot what it was like to sit like this and just – _be._ He’s grateful for the chance, even if he doesn’t really deserve it.

Urahara calls a break when Orihime inevitably slams down her last card and does a little good-luck victory dance. He produces snacks from the staff room. Packets of toasted nori in little plastic tubs, bags of peanuts, chili-flavored crushed ramen, all kinds of small things that scream _bargain bin._ They eat and talk about nothing in particular and he feels like he is at peace. The argument with Ryuuken fades to the back of his mind, and it’s almost like they’re in high school again.

Thunder rumbles through the store again, shaking the walls, and they all pause for a moment, waiting for something to happen. He doesn’t know what they’re waiting for. The roof certainly isn’t going to cave in. But he waits, too, until the last tremors have passed, and the cards are dealt around again.

Most days, he wonders what has changed. On days like this, he wonders why he cares so much that anything has changed at all. How many people are lucky enough to be so content, even for a short while? How many people are lucky enough to have friends who would take them back after—?

They spend the night at the shop, sleeping on spare pallets. He listens to his friends breathing, listens to the constant rattle of rain against the walls, and when he falls asleep, he barely dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter coming up. Thanks for reading so far!


	6. the red hill

The cemetery where his mother’s headstone lies is in Gakuen-chou, at the foot of a hill on the outskirts of town. There are headstones for other Ishidas scattered about, but he’s not sure if he’s related to any of them, and there’s no way to be sure about the family tree without consulting Ryuuken. The only other person who would have been able to tell him anything about his great-grandparents or extended family has had his ashes interned at the family plot across town in Sakurabashi.

Despite his cold indifference to the family legacy, Ryuuken doesn’t tolerate any gossip about his respect for the dead. Whenever Uryuu has visited either plot, the gravestones have been spotless. Ryuuken only takes him along to the cemeteries during Obon – possibly to keep up appearances, possibly because of force of habit, it’s hard to tell. Ryuuken isn’t a religious man in any sense. It could be that he does this out of some deep-seated, lingering sense of filial guilt, although that didn’t stop him from being outwardly indifferent about Souken’s death. Uryuu’s grandmother died before he was born, and Souken didn’t talk much about her, but from what he could tell, she hadn’t had the closest of relationships with her son.

This headstone is modest and unobtrusive. The family name is engraved on the front. The name “Ishida Kanae” is off to one side, and the space next to it is empty, waiting for his father. He wonders if he’s supposed to arrange for all of these things after Ryuuken’s death. He’s never made his wishes about this sort of thing clear.

He’s not even sure why he’s here, anyway. He came with Ryuuken for Obon last month, but he also visited on the anniversary of her death. He doesn’t usually come out more often than that. The cemetery is a little too silent, and more often than not he’ll see a Plus wandering around with flat, lightless eyes. It unnerves him. He used to keep the Quincy cross in his palm as he walked through the grove of stone pillars, but this time it’s still at home, in his bedside drawer, like it has been all summer. His hand closes around nothing at all.

 _I wonder how they met,_ he thinks dimly. He never asked Souken to tell him that story. _And what kind of girl would fall in love with him._ He’s seen one or two pictures of Ryuuken as a child, tucked away in Souken’s papers. Their faces are similar, but Ryuuken’s hair is white and his face is always serious, like he’s deep in thought. There’s no record of his mother in those pictures. He knows her name, her age, knows she was _gemischt,_ and that she likely served the Ishida family in some capacity, but that’s about it. He wonders if they fell in love at first sight. He wonders how Ryuuken would act if he were in love, and finds himself wholly incapable of imagining it. He’d have to had smiled at her at some point, or embraced her, shown her some kind of affection if they got married. It could have been an arranged marriage, but from what he said that night, he doubts anyone would have gone to the trouble of matching him with a _gemischt_ Quincy. He has a feeling that he was originally matched with Kurosaki Masaki.

Still. In all of the pictures of their married life, his mother looks happy. Ryuuken can never really manage more than a ghost of a smile, but his face looks less severe, and his eyes are gentler. He wishes they’d had more time. He wishes he could remember her voice. If the Auswählen had never happened, if Yhwach had died a thousand years ago like he was supposed to…

He closes his eyes as he puts his palms together and raises his hands to his face. Ryuuken never taught him any rites or prayers, so instead he thinks about the picture on the shelf in his room. His mother smiles demurely at the camera, thick black hair pulled back into a ponytail that drapes over the shoulder of her pale blue blouse. There’s a ring on her middle finger, a slim gold band set with a blue gem. Ryuuken doesn’t smile, but he’s not frowning, either, and his arm is around her shoulders. There is an infant gathered in her graceful arms, a bandage on the back of his right hand. The cuffs of her sleeves are buttoned; his are rolled up to his elbows.

 _What would you tell me to do? What would you say? I tried to care for you in the only way I knew how, and I failed. I hurt my friends. I don’t know how to help them. I don’t even know how to help myself._ Then the new sadness seeps through. _How am I supposed to do this? He won’t even admit that he’s done anything wrong. I know I wasn’t the son he wanted, but… I thought he would understand. He loved you. Does he even remember how it felt anymore?_

_I’m sorry, Mom._

Uryuu opens his eyes, and his hands return to his sides. The headstone remains silent, and everything is still except for the mosquitoes that flit through the air. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but he stares at the family name anyway, hoping for a revelation. There’s some mantra that he’s heard people chant at shrines – the nembutsu. They know what to say to gain enlightenment. Why doesn’t he? Souken had probably been a Catholic when he was younger. Besides the five-pronged cross, he kept a rosary in a box in his room. He doesn’t know where that box has gone. Probably the way of all of his mother’s things. He wonders what prayers Souken used to say over his rosary. Whether they would help.

Pressing his wrist to his temple, he wipes away a bead of sweat. It’s high noon and the cemetery is empty. The air is hot and heavy again, and his shirt is damp with sweat. Mosquitoes and damselflies dance between the headstones. The only other person here is the groundskeeper, who is resting by the entrance. From the hillside, he can see Karakura glittering in the sunlight.

It makes a weird kind of sense that Ryuuken would decide to put his gravestone here, as far away from the rest of his family as he could get without leaving the city. Maybe a little improper, but none of his family were around to object when his wife died, and Souken certainly couldn’t convince him to do anything. He broke from tradition in all of the important ways. He doesn’t know if Ryuuken wanted to start a new family grave or just wanted to get his wife and child as far away from other Quincy as possible. And he doesn’t know whether he, Uryuu, wants to be buried here or with the rest of the family. _He’s going to give me one last chance to prove my loyalties,_ he thinks wryly. _Provided I don’t die before he does._

And what would happen then? Would Ryuuken bury him with his mother or with Souken? Where does he stand with him? He can never quite tell. He is so used to Ryuuken having a double purpose for everything that it’s hard to tell if he does anything out of genuine feeling without trying to control how others see him.

He tears his mind away from the subject of his death – he’s had enough time to think about that in the past few years – and bows to the headstone. It feels appropriate. Like what a good son should do to respect his mother’s grave. Then he turns to leave.

His cell phone buzzes in his pocket. He waits until he’s out of the graveyard and standing on the sidewalk to check it.

23:16 KUROSAKI I  
hey where r u right now

23:21 (ME)  
Why do you need to know?

23:21 KUROSAKI I  
bored 

23:22 KUROSAKI I  
im with keigo and chad come hang 

23:25 KUROSAKI I  
ishida!!!! i know ur reading these 

He rolls his eyes and starts walking down the street, back the way he came.

23:25 (ME)  
I’m in Gakuen-chou. Where are you? 

23:25 KUROSAKI I  
shopping district 

23:26 KUROSAKI I  
are u coming?? 

23:26 (ME)  
I guess I have nothing else to do. 

23:26 KUROSAKI I  
ok great come 2 the book place 

23:26 (ME)  
Are you trying to say “library?” 

23:27 KUROSAKI I  
no dumbass i mean the bookstore 

23:27 KUROSAKI I  
also can we talk 2moro 

23:27 KUROSAKI I  
like alone

Uryuu frowns and his thumb pauses over the keypad. What could they possibly have to talk about? It’s not like he bothered to contact him during the semester. Well, maybe that’s unfair – he hadn’t made that great of an effort either. 

23:28 (ME)  
About what? 

23:31 KUROSAKI I  
just like 

23:31 KUROSAKI I  
stuff 

23:31 (ME)  
What does that mean? 

23:33 KUROSAKI I  
ill tell u later can we talk or not 

23:33 (ME)  
Fine. I’m on my way. 

Maybe he’ll finally figure out why Kurosaki’s been acting so oddly. Chances are he’ll just bail and change the subject, though.

Uryuu sighs and considers his options. Gakuen-chou is in the northeast of Karakura, and the town seat is on the western border. It takes a little over an hour to get there by bus, and over twice as long if he walks. He could use hirenkyaku to get there faster, but he’ll have to take back alleys all the way, and he’ll tire himself out by the end of the day. _It’ll be good practice,_ he thinks, resigned, and takes to the rooftops.

He is completely alone when he feels the spike of corrupted reiatsu prickling along his skin, which can only mean one thing. And he’s left his cross at home. Ryuuken would have a field day going off on him about this.

The Hollow is close by. He can feel the jagged edge of its energy pressing into his mind, and it reeks like a corpse even though he can’t smell it. Reishi collects automatically beneath his feet and he leaps onto the roof of a multi-story parking garage, scanning the surrounding area. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, just the Karakura skyline. It must be small if he can’t see it from here, then. He closes his eyes and concentrates.

It’s not even a kilometer away. He can be there in a few minutes. But what is he going to _do?_ It’s not like he can summon a bow, not a proper one anyway, and he doesn’t have any auxiliary weaponry. Kurosaki doesn’t have his gigai. Chad might be able to use his Fullbring, but he doesn’t know how long he can sustain Sonido for.

 _What the hell, they’ll figure out a solution,_ he grumbles, and whips out his cell phone.

23:58 (ME)  
Found a Hollow. Help me out. 

He presses the button to send the SMS, then flips the phone shut and slips it into his breast pocket. Even if he can’t sense any distress from the Hollow’s general area, meaning that it hasn’t found any prey yet, it won’t do to let it roam into more populated areas, or chase down whatever Plus it can find. He dashes from rooftop to rooftop, the wind rushing in his ears. His shirt is damp with sweat, and the constant heat of the sun makes his black hair burn like fire. By the time he crouches down on the roof of a small apartment complex, Hollow finally in sight, he has to blink away sweat from his eyes. He checks his phone. Two SMS received.

24:03 KUROSAKI I  
on r way

24:03 KUROSAKI I  
dont do anything stupid. 

He sighs and leaves his phone and wallet on the roof so he won’t lose them during the fight. The only entrance onto the roof is a maintenance hatch, and from the dirt accumulating up here it’s likely that they haven’t been doing much anyway.

The Hollow walks on four hooved feet, and has the face and tusks of a boar, with wild black eyes shining from beneath a mask of bones. An additional pair of arms sprout from what would otherwise be its neck, armed with claws, six on each hand. A long, spiked tail like a scorpion’s sprouts from its rear end and curls up over its back, swaying from side to side. There’s a long bone stinger at the tip that he’ll have to look out for.

He watches from the rooftop as the Hollow lumbers along the street, sweeping its head back and forth as if scanning the area for food. If it sights anything, it will probably make a noise to paralyze it, one of those awful screeches, and then pounce. He has to be ready to distract it while it’s making that noise, or just before it pounces, which is an incredibly small window of time.

It has to be searching for _something._ Hollows don’t just appear out of nowhere to snack on souls that happen to wander across their path. Despite their unwieldy appearances, they are crafty hunters, which is why it’s so difficult for a terrified Plus to escape even small ones. He looks for the Plus, too, but he can’t feel that extra blip of spiritual pressure that a Plus would produce.

He follows the Hollow for two blocks before the blip appears. He spots the Plus before the Hollow does. The Plus is the ghost of a young man, a teenager, dressed in a striped t-shirt and sweatpants with beaten-up sneakers. Unfortunately, the Plus hasn’t seen the Hollow and is moving toward it from a block away. The time just before it pounces is decreasing as each second ticks by. He could make a move now and lead the Hollow away from the Plus, but where to? Either he keeps running and brings it into a more populated area, or keeps leading it around within these few blocks. And he’s not sure how long it’s going to take Chad and Kurosaki to get here.

The Hollow pauses, sniffing, as if it’s scented something. Whatever plans he was starting to put together are thrown away as he leaps from the roof down onto the street behind the Hollow.

He’s been suppressing his own spiritual pressure to disguise himself, but he lets it flare to its fullest extent. Kurosaki will probably be more useful in this regard, because he has no idea what “control” is, but that won’t matter until he gets here. The Hollow is surprisingly fast and whirls around, lashing out with its tail. He barely dodges it before the Hollow is looking at him, pawing the ground like a bull about to charge.

He feels like one of those toreadors, dodging an enraged bull and just avoiding being gored by one of its long horns. Except this bull has neck-arms and a scorpion tail instead of horns, and he doesn’t have any spears to fight it off with. Which makes his situation more and more difficult.

The Plus has run off, which is good, but that means the Hollow’s full attention is going to be on him from now on, and it’s going to be a test of endurance to see how long he can keep the monster interested without being literally killed. He flashes to the right, behind it, but it’s fast, and turns as he passes by. Incidentally, he can identify several weak spots on it now, including the back of the head which isn’t protected by the mask, the seven spaces between the bone ribs encasing its midsection, and the tail, which isn’t protected by anything and could be severed quickly _if he just had his fucking cross._

Which he doesn’t. So he flashes back and forth, dodging a little more closely every time. He can feel the wind from its lashing tail at one point, and that’s when he knows he’s gotten too close. He retreats a block away and lets his spiritual pressure bloom out in an even bigger imprint, to keep the Hollow’s attention. It works, and charges toward him, faster than it has demonstrated so far. _Shit._ That was a bad decision. He doesn’t know how long he’s been playing cat-and-mouse with the Hollow, but from the burning in his legs it feels like hours. He’s sweating profusely and his heart is pounding, but he’s not quite tired yet.

Despite the fact that it’s as tall as a tree and several times as wide, it can turn extremely fast, almost like an antelope. It gets more and more difficult to dodge the long clawed fingers and the lashing tail. It’s less like a scorpion’s tail and more like a whip, he realizes belatedly; there are two edges to the stinger, so it can impale as well as cut. It slices through the air so quickly that it whistles. He doesn’t think the Hollow has even reached its limit. It just keeps getting faster and faster the further apart he spaces his movements. Time for a new strategy, then. He takes off dashing through several back alleys, pausing every so often so the Hollow doesn’t quite lose sight of him. He can keep this up for maybe fifteen minutes, no more. Chad had better have kept up his Sonido mastery, because otherwise he’s probably going to die.

The Hollow keeps up the chase. It doesn’t follow him into the narrow alleyways, but gallops through the surrounding streets as if trying to get a sight on him, or to fence him in. To anyone who lacks spiritual sensitivity, this must look ridiculous. He can hear the Hollow’s screechy breathing, the thunder of its hooves on the pavement, and the whistle of its tail through the air, but to anyone just looking out of their window, he’s dashing between buildings and throwing glances over his shoulder as if he’s being followed, lungs pumping like a bellows.

It catches him once. He slightly miscalculates where the tail is going and it nicks his shoulder, tearing the shirt sleeve. Nothing serious, probably not poisonous, but the force behind the blow makes him stumble, and it nearly catches him a second time. If he gets hit again, when he’s more tired and less nimble, it won’t be pretty.

Five minutes pass by. Ten. He vaults up to the roof from the top of a dumpster, the muscles in his legs burning with exertion. The Hollow shrieks, a terrible sound like a sheet of metal being ripped apart, and rears up on its hind legs to try and spot him. It can’t quite do it and howls in frustration. He has two options now: continue a fight he’s extremely ill-prepared for, or retreat and let it get away, possibly downtown. The latter option is unacceptable. The former is unappealing. Especially when he has to dive backwards to avoid getting his face blasted off by some kind of spirit particle projectile fired from the tip of the tail. It’s not quite a Cero, but could probably kill him anyway. He stays low to his stomach, and casts about for Kurosaki’s reiatsu or Chad’s.

There – faint, but growing quickly, a little more than a kilometer away. All he has to do is wait it out. He heaves another breath and conceals his spiritual pressure. Now that he’s out of the Hollow’s visual range, it’ll think he just disappeared. The Hollow screams again, frustration mounting, and treads back and forth several times on the street below, trying to figure out a way to get up onto the roof and find out where its prey has gone. The sun is beating down on his back and he wipes sweat away from his eyes with the back of his hand. He’s panting like a dog. His fault, obviously, for not keeping up with his training, but then again, there hadn’t really been any need to.

An unnatural silence settles. He can’t even hear the Hollow’s monstrous breathing. Ordinarily he would angle a series of arrows up into the sky and listen for the Hollow’s reaction when they fell, like a game of battleship, but he doesn’t have his cross. So he crouch-walks over to the edge and peeks over.

The Hollow is looking attentively in the direction of Kurosaki’s reiatsu. If it charges, it could take both of the incoming fighters by surprise and wound, possibly kill them. _Shit._ He has to keep it distracted so they can strike the first blow.

It’s difficult to keep his reiatsu level above Kurosaki’s, but it works. The Hollow shrieks again and turns back to the building, hooves like thunderclaps on the asphalt. He waits –

It’s just enough. Kurosaki and Chad come in like lightning bolts from his left. Chad has his Fullbring ready and slams into the side of the Hollow. Kurosaki falls back and stays slightly behind. Probably not his idea.

“Hey, Ishida!”

He shuts down all signs of his reiatsu and vaults down to stand next to Kurosaki.

“Sorry we took so long,” the shinigami says.

He shakes his head. “You don’t have any weapons, do you? It’s just Chad?”

“‘Just Chad’?” Chad yells from the other side of the street.

Kurosaki frowns. “You can’t use your bow?”

“Left the cross at home,” he answers shortly.

A huge crunching noise echoes through the street and he turns to see that Chad has cracked the mask of the Hollow with a single punch. It rears and backs up a bit. Chad chases in an instant with Sonido and deals it a second and a third blow. But the Hollow is learning – the third blow just hits it glancingly. It swipes at him with both of its huge clawed hands and jabs with its tail, shrieking all the while. Chad attempts to sidestep it, but it’s too agile and re-targets him in almost no time.

“We have to distract it so that Chad can finish it off quickly,” he says. “Otherwise it’s going to outmaneuver him and come for us anyway.”

“Yeah. On it.”

The idea that they adopt is simple. If the Hollow can’t choose which of its prey to target, and all three of them are constantly moving, it will hesitate in attacking them, and then they will launch the counterattack. Kurosaki flash-steps here and there, always crossing paths with someone else. The distance that Uryuu has to travel is vastly shortened, but it’s more difficult to keep track of all the variables, especially when he has no options to counter the Hollow’s attacks with. The tail whistles by his ear as he lunges in front of Kurosaki and flashes his reiatsu. Kurosaki, in turn, appears next to Chad, then at the Hollow’s side, then behind it. It turns to pursue him, right into Chad’s red-and-black fist. The mask shatters on one side and the Hollow howls. He jabs twice while it deals with the pain, cracking bone, then darts away.

The maneuver works two more times. Chad strikes at the neck, then the shoulder. The Hollow’s wounds ooze black blood, and its jaw is slack, one of its arms dragging on the street. Kurosaki’s energy isn’t even tapped yet. By all rights the Hollow should be most interested in him, but instead it lunges after Chad, not even enticed by the enormous reiatsu sources dancing just within reach. Chad has to scramble backwards. Even injured, the monster is still fast.

Kurosaki suddenly flashes next to him.

“Do you really need your cross to form that bow?” His breath comes in short bursts. They can keep doing this for a while longer, but unless Chad gets some more powerful hits in, it won’t matter.

“Tried it before. Barely works.” He had experimented forming a bow without a cross for a while, after Hueco Mundo, but the results had been barely worth mentioning. The soul-synthesized silver had been specifically developed to channel reishi into the form of a bow. It was like a mold. He was sure there had been some kind of bow-formation technique that preceded the cross, but it hadn’t been recorded in any of the notes Souken handed down to him.

“Work on it,” Kurosaki says. “We might need a Plan B.”

 _It’s not feasible to reconstruct a millenium-old technique in a matter of minutes,_ Uryuu wants to say, but Kurosaki is already gone.

Like the incredibly bullheaded idiot he is, Kurosaki tries more direct means to distract the Hollow. He flashes up, and seems to hang in the air for a moment, then slams his feet down on the Hollow’s head and surges away. Infuriatingly, it works. The Hollow looks around for the thing that tapped its head and Chad dashes forward with an uppercut to the underside of its jaw. The jawbone truly breaks then, and the Hollow’s mouth hangs open, its oil-black tongue lolling out over its broken teeth.

He tries to form the bow, but it’s too unstable and dissipates just as he tries to extend the energy from his hand, just like every other time he’s tried to do it. _Dammit!_

A red point of light starts to form before it. One of those Cero-like blasts again.

“Chad!” Kurosaki yells in warning.

Chad crosses his arms in front of himself as a preemptive shield, then dodges to the side as the Cero blasts down the thankfully empty street. Unfortunately, he dodges onto the side where the functioning claws are, and gets backhanded into an alleyway for his trouble.

“Shit,” Uryuu mutters, heart jackhammering. He immediately heads for the mouth of the alleyway, gathering reishi around his hand. Kurosaki was there right after the impact. He counts the seconds passing as neither of them emerge from behind the wall, and each one makes him more and more anxious. He doesn’t know if they can hold the Hollow off until Chad recovers – if he _can_ recover in time.

He ducks inside the alley just in time to see Kurosaki turn around. Chad has dented a dumpster with his impact, and he is out cold for now. There’s a line of blood tracing its way down his face. Kurosaki doesn’t look anxious or nervous, exactly, but his brow is furrowed and he clearly has no idea what to do without his zanpakutou.

“Get him behind the dumpster,” Uryuu says, then glances over his shoulder. The Hollow is trying to nurse its injuries, but that’s because it knows its prey is trapped with no way out, and any minute now it’ll shove its face down the alley and blast them all to death with its laser thing. His mind is racing.

Option one – they beat a retreat to Urahara’s and hope the old man can lend someone or something to help out. Not very viable. He’s personally not sure he’d make it all the way there.

Option two – get Chad up onto a rooftop and hope he wakes up soon, and is in shape to fight. This is unlikely. Sure, they’d be out of range of the Hollow, but Kurosaki has absolutely no control over his reiatsu and unless they take option one the Hollow would just catch up with them anyway.

Option three –

The Hollow turns earlier than he expected it to. Kurosaki is still dragging Chad’s unconscious form behind the dumpster when it opens its mouth. He raises his bow arm instinctively, but the reishi is still just a cloud around him.

 _Fucking **focus,** _ he screams at himself. _Ignore everything else, just focus on this._

The world narrows down to his bow arm. He falls to one knee for support and forces all of the ambient spirit particles within ten meters of him into the channels of his major arteries, starting at his left shoulder. It feels like cold fire. That much he can do without the cross. With the cross, the next step would be easy as breathing, but without it, he’s worried might lose control of the form at any moment.

He forces the reishi out of his hand and extends two prongs from the top and the bottom in a crude mimicry of his bow. The particles aren’t all moving in the right direction. Ideally, they should be swirling around and around with the bow itself formed from careful control of the vortex. There’s no time. He can see the red glow out of the corner of his eye and he tries to form the arrow from nothing. No time to worry about refining the particle circulation. He accelerates the reishi streams until they’re spinning around his hand like a motor. _Come on._ His fingers shake with the effort and he can feel sweat dripping down his face.

The Cero is about to fire. He can sense it. He looses the reishi and it rushes from his arm like a spear, sailing straight through the Cero and into the Hollow’s gaping mouth. The bow dissolves, all of the spirit particles consumed in the projectile. It’s not even sharp, but the speed and close distance must have given it penetrating force anyway, and the Cero funnels backwards into the Hollow’s stomach, exploding inside of it; he can hear the muffled boom. The Hollow staggers to the side and then falls over, crashing to the asphalt, motionless. It’s dead. The light fades out of its eyes and it immediately begins to crumble into ash. His heart pounds in his ears.

“Holy shit,” Kurosaki says from behind him, breathless. “You did it.”

He looks down at the inside of his forearm. Forcing that much unfocused reishi through his circulatory system was not a good idea. There are broken blood vessels littering his hand and arm up to the elbow, and there are small cuts all over his palm and fingertips. Doesn’t look like anything life-threatening, but he’s going to have a bunch of bruises on his bow arm for a while.

There’s a hand on his shoulder. His head jerks up. Kurosaki is looking down at him with a weird expression on his face. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s concern.

“You okay?”

He nods. “Fine. I... don’t think I can do that very often.”

His half-hearted attempt at humor is met with a bark of laughter. “Can you help me get Chad to the shop?”

He nods again. “Just. Um. Give me a moment.”

Kurosaki disappears behind the dumpster while he tries to regain his breath. The wounds on his arm are starting to sting now, little red dots blossoming under the skin like ink stains. Uryuu stands up, dizzy. His sides ache and the cut on his shoulder throbs dully. It’ll probably get worse once the adrenaline rush fades, but that won’t be for another several minutes. All of his limbs feel like lead as he trudges behind the dumpster to help pick Chad up.

Fortunately, he’s coming around. There’s a cut on his head and Kurosaki checks his pupils for signs of a concussion, cautiously pronouncing him “okay enough to get to the shop.”

Chad waves him away. “Head hurts,” he says. “And I sprained my shoulder. Maybe.”

“Okay,” Kurosaki says. “It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get there if we hurry. Ishida, can you follow?”

“Yeah.”

The other boy helps Chad climb to his feet, letting him lean on his shoulder. Chad’s shaggy hair obscures his eyes and expression, but Kurosaki is openly concerned. He’s always been easy to read that way. Uryuu can practically sense his brain rushing to the conclusion of _Chad could have serious brain damage._

They take off, with some effort, across the rooftops, leaving the Hollow’s half-disintegrated carcass behind. He lags behind Kurosaki initially, even when the other is weighed down, but after a few minutes he gets a second wind and his strides become more confident. The shop is to the southeast of them, below Gakuen-chou, in the south of Mitsumiya. There’s not much to see when they take the rooftops and backroads, but the buildings rise steadily until they’re back in a business district. The Urahara Shop is considered a quaint little convenience store next to the glass-and-steel monoliths towering around it.

Chad stands on his own, left arm limp at his side, while Kurosaki bangs on the back door of the shop.

“Hey, is anyone home?”

The door opens. Jinta fixes all of them with a glare.

“Yeah, he told me you’d be on your way soon,” he grumbles. “C’mon in.”

Urahara is in one of the storage rooms, the one they played daihinmin in last week when the power went out. When they enter the room, he turns around, a frown on his face. He scratches at the stubble on his chin.

“What did you get yourselves into?”

Kurosaki shoves his hands in his pockets. “Ishida engaged a Hollow without a weapon and only Chad could actually hurt it.”

Uryuu raises his eyebrows incredulously. Does Kurosaki blame him? “It was going after a Plus.”

“I assume the Hollow is dead now, anyway,” Urahara says dryly, then pulls out a stool from the corner and gestures to it. “Sit, please.”

Chad lowers himself onto the chair with a little difficulty. He’s probably got more bruises on his back. The line of blood on his forehead has dried. Ururu drops by to hand Chad a damp towel.

“Thanks,” he says. She nods and slips back out of the room. It doesn’t look like she’s in the mood to talk. Chad quickly wipes his face and chases the dried blood past his hairline, wincing as he passes over some tender spots.

Urahara cracks his knuckles. “I haven’t had to use healing kidou in a while,” he admits. “But don’t you worry! I used to have a lot of friends in the Fourth.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Chad grits out just before his head is engulfed in a soft green glow.

Urahara hums and mutters officiously, pulling all sorts of theatrical faces.

“Well, you don’t have any brain damage,” he says finally. “The concussion should be gone.” His hands move to Chad’s right shoulder. “You’re lucky I’m still around to help you kids do your jobs.”

“You like it here,” Kurosaki scoffs. “You never would have gone back to Soul Society. It doesn’t matter if you got a pardon or not.”

Something inside him finally turns off. It must be the adrenaline. His engine has just shut down and he leans back against the wall, sliding down until he can rest his head on his knees. The backs of his eyelids are littered with fake stars. His arm – _arms_ are heavy. The air is hot and dry but he is cold.

“That shows how much you know.”

“What, you don’t like being in the land of the living?”

“It’s overrated, to say the least.”

The second time in a month. His brain is split between the present and the past. He is halfway between the Urahara Shop and the plateau on top of Hueco Mundo. Pinned like a butterfly, missing his left hand and forearm; whole, with just a few bruises and cuts. Kurosaki’s voice is heavy and distorted. It swims through the air like a fish. Who would have thought it would end here? But it’s not ending here. It ended a long time ago. Orihime is crying, though. He can hear her, but he can’t do anything about it. The sound of it reminds him of something he saw once in high school – a leaf caught in the chainlink fence on the tennis court, shivering in the wind. The blood in his veins has turned to ice.

“Whatever. How’s your arm feeling, Chad?”

“Better.”

“Huh. That’s good.”

“Why was he the lone attacker?” Urahara interrupts. “Surely you would have had a better chance with Ishida-kun mounting a double offensive.”

“He left his cross at home.”

“And why on earth would he do that?”

“Why don’t you ask him? Hey, Ishida – Ishida?”

The sound of his name draws him out of the memory. He raises his head, fighting the weight of reiatsu – and breaks through it like he is bursting out of the water, gasping for air.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he snaps. Kurosaki with long hair, Kurosaki with short hair. He doesn’t want to be in the same room as – the Hollow with horns. _That’s not him,_ he snarls, but nothing he thinks or says or does can silence the alarms going off inside his head. This hasn’t happened since the beginning of the month. He snapped out of it more quickly this time than before, but it’s still –

Kurosaki crosses his arms. “You don’t _look_ fine.”

He’s still breathing heavily and really does not need _him_ of all people breathing down his neck right now. Chad and Urahara are looking at him too and if they could look literally anywhere else in the room that would be _great._

“Leave it, Kurosaki.”

Of course, he doesn’t. “Dude, you look like you’re sick.”

“I told you to leave it,” he says through gritted teeth. “So _leave it.”_

Unexpectedly, Chad joins in with a warning in his voice. “Ichigo…”

“Okay. Okay.” He puts his hands up as if to show he’s unarmed, brow furrowed. “I just… want to know if he’s hurt or something.”

He can’t be in this room anymore, so he stands up and leaves before anyone else can say anything. Heading to the staff bathroom at the other end of the hallway, he breathes deeply and tries to shove the ghost of the memory away, closing the door behind him. The fluorescent light makes his skin look sickly pale in stark contrast to the dark bags under his eyes. The walls are paneled with wood, and every noise he makes reflects back into his ears.

It’s not that he’s angry with Kurosaki. Not quite. It’s just difficult to be near him right now, like looking into a bright light while being assaulted by a pounding headache. He appreciates having any friends at all, but he’d rather not have them around while he has – whatever _this_ is going on.

It’s not like Kurosaki hasn’t been acting weird around him, either. He acts nervous, almost guilty. Probably about something that’s not even his fault. They all know _he_ wasn’t the star player in the Wandenreich catastrophe, after all, even if he did manage to put Yhwach out of commission. They’d be at an impasse if not for the _god damned_ memories. He never remembered the fight in Hueco Mundo like that in the two years since it happened. Maybe it’s delayed-onset trauma. Sometimes this kind of reaction takes years to manifest. But that was hardly even the worst thing to happen to him. Being stabbed is nothing like having organs actually burst inside your body. So he doesn’t understand why this is happening, or why it’s happening now.

His musings are interrupted by a knock on the door that makes him flinch. Urahara’s voice seems louder than usual inside the small bathroom.

“Ishida-kun? Are you in there?”

“I’m fine,” he grits out.

“When you’re done, I’d like to take a look at your arm.”

“Just some cuts and bruises. Don’t bother.”

“Ishida-kun, I need to take a look at your keiraku.”

His brow furrows. Keiraku? Urahara isn’t a doctor. But then again, a scientist of the Seireitei would probably have studied things like ki and meridians. “Why is that?”

“I need to make sure you didn’t damage any of the pathways.”

“Quincy use—”

“The circulatory system. I’m well aware.”

“Then why—”

“Take a look at your arm. You’ll find reason to suspect that you weren’t only channelling along blood vessels.”

He extends his arm in front of him, palm-up. The little bruises and cuts mostly lie along the visible veins and arteries, and the bruising hasn’t spread much, so he probably hasn’t severed anything important. But Urahara is right. There are bruises like little dots lined up in relatively even intervals. There’s one on the inside of his forearm, five points, and two on the back of his arm, a series of three and a series of four. There are probably more extending up into his shoulder. He can almost hear Ryuuken’s voice – _How reckless._

When he opens the door, Urahara is leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded. He quirks an eyebrow, scratching at the straw-colored stubble on his chin with his left hand and gesturing to the room he’d left earlier with his right.

It’s empty except for the shelves of knick-knacks and cardboard boxes of books, trinkets, and souvenirs shoved up against the walls.

“Sit,” Urahara says.

Uryuu sits down on the chair that Chad had previously occupied. His legs are starting to protest. The wash of adrenaline is gone and now he’s left with barely any energy.

“Take your arm out of your shirt. I need to see how far the damage goes.”

He rolls his eyes but unbuttons his shirt and drags his bow arm out of his sleeve. The cold air raises goosebumps on his skin.

Urahara prods and pokes to different effects. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt at all, but sometimes it makes his whole arm burn. After a methodical examination of his hand, arm, and shoulder, Urahara shakes his head.

“All right, put your shirt back on. It’s not as serious as I thought it could have been, but I suggest never doing that again.”

As he pulls his shirt down over his head and shoulders, Urahara sighs.

“Why weren’t you carrying your cross, anyway?”

“I’d prefer not to discuss that.”

He snorts. “Don’t be such a brat. You endangered your friends’ lives today.”

“I had no doubt that we would be able to defeat a small Hollow even without weapons,” Uryuu says shortly. “And I didn’t force them to help me. They came because they wanted to.”

Urahara seems like he really, really wants to say something but is keeping his mouth shut. His face is carefully neutral as he places his hands above Uryuu’s left arm, creating a field of soft green light. Uryuu watches intently as most of the bruises shrink, little by little, and the gash on his upper arm seals itself up into a nearly-invisible scabbed line, followed by the tiny cuts on his hand. The field of healing energy hums gently.

After a few moments, the old man speaks again, slowly and more measured.

“Ishida-kun. If what you’re saying is true, they could have left you to fight the Hollow yourself. So why didn’t they?”

He raises his eyebrows. “They take this kind of work seriously. And they don’t ignore people who ask for their help.”

“They’re your friends. They have a…” He sighs. _“_ How do I put this? _Personal investment_ in your wellbeing. They wouldn’t ignore anyone, that’s true. But they are specifically worried about you. Don’t tell me you came here without being specifically worried about Sado-kun.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to say that what you did with the Wandenreich doesn’t matter to them,” he says mildly, moving his hands up to the marks on Uryuu’s shoulder. “They were ready to forgive you even before you betrayed Yhwach. So let them.”

“It’s not about that.” He keeps his eyes away from Urahara’s.

“So? What is it about? What could be so important that you’d put Sado-kun in danger without any real backup? Surely a Quincy—”

“I’m not,” he grits out. “Anymore. So I don’t carry it.”

“Not a warrior? Or not a Quincy?” He tilts his head to one side, questioning.

Uryuu shakes his head. “I’m a chemist.”

Urahara makes an exasperated sound. “Do you know what a concussion is? It’s a mild form of _brain damage._ Whatever you choose to be, if it means letting your friends get injured, is it really worth it?”

“I almost killed them with it _on.”_ How can he get him to understand? “I’ve hurt them more wearing that stupid thing than not. And I could help a lot of people with the things I’m studying at Rikadai right now.”

The old man sighs, his expression unreadable. The last bruises on his shoulder and upper arm shrink into little dots, then disappear entirely. All that’s left is the pinprick bruises that follow his meridians. Urahara lifts his hands away and the green healing glow dissipates.

“Look,” he says, “Have you ever considered that you can still defend your friends without that title? Ichigo certainly has.”

“It’s more than a title. It’s my heritage, my grandfather. It’s – all the ancestors that I don’t know teaching me things when I read the old manuals. My family, for generations. It’s not just the bow. It’s a way of life. Ichigo can abandon the shinigami whenever he wants, but if I keep using that cross, I’m still a Quincy. I won’t… be able to change who I am. Who I’m going to become.”

Urahara frowns. “It doesn’t have to be that way. The cross only has whatever meaning you give it. This is an opportunity to make it yours, and not theirs. You aren’t like them.”

“I can’t make a new meaning for it. I’m not going to disrespect my grandfather and his colleagues by turning their legacy into something it isn’t. But I don’t want anything to do with the Quincy anymore. The moment I put that thing back on, I go back to them. And I can’t do it.” He looks up at Urahara, silently pleading for him to understand.

“Even considering that, think about it. Your inaction might mean a lot to you, but to Sado-kun, it’s a missing piece of his team. It’s a layer of protection that he can’t rely on anymore.”

“Ichigo wasn’t carrying his badge, either. I’m not the only one at fault.”

A dangerous glint appears in his eye. “Don’t,” he says firmly, “deflect this, Uryuu. He knows. He’s going to go home and make sure he never goes anywhere without it again. Because it means more to him than Soul Society. It means the safety of others.”

Uryuu explodes. “The entire philosophy behind the Quincy martial arts and code of conduct was made up by a genocidal dictator who _bred us_ to kill shinigami! He ripped my mother’s soul out of her body to make himself more powerful just because she wasn’t from a ‘pure’ bloodline! Do you know what that feels like? Everything my grandfather taught me about who the Quincy were was pure idealism. He knew who we really were and he tried to change it, but now they’re all dead except for me, and there’s nothing left to change. I care about them, I really do, but this isn’t just my pride at stake. I was born to kill them, even if I didn’t know it, and I betrayed them. I put them at the mercy of _gods._ I couldn’t help them. I’ve never been able to help them. The first time I lost my abilities, it didn’t even matter. Kurosaki saved Kuchiki-san and exposed Aizen with people who were actually useful. I’ve known since then. You’re calling me an extra layer of protection, when what I really am with that cross is baggage. I attract danger. I’m one more back they have to watch. One more responsibility that they don’t need. I’m never going to be that for them again.”

He’s shaking. He doesn’t know why. He’s furious and – Ryuuken’s words come to mind – deeply _unsettled._ He wants Urahara to understand exactly how evil all of this is, the silver and the white-and-blue. It was an empire built on the corpses of innocent people, more than he can possibly imagine. All of this, the bow and and the swords and the hundreds of spells, created just to satisfy one man’s murderous desire for power. He hates it. He can’t even look at his cross anymore. And he cares so much about his friends, but he doesn’t know what he can do for them, wonders all the time if he’ll end up hurting them again. He doesn’t know what he wants from them, if he’s even entitled to want anything after everything he’s done.

The old man sighs, rubbing his hands together. “You’re not useless, you know. You’ve done a lot of good work for me, and I’m thankful for it. You might not realize it now, but you’re the only one who thinks so lowly of yourself.” He wants to protest again, but Urahara waves his hands. “Look, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’ve always been a man of science, so I might not understand these kinds of things the way I should. I – _we_ just want you to be safe.”

“I know,” he says, quiet. “But don’t you think I know how to keep myself safe better than anyone else?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Urahara shakes his head. “I guess I won’t be the one to change your mind, then… that’s all right, though. In due time. Anyway!” He folds his arms. “You need to let your _keiraku_ heal. They should do so naturally, as long as you don’t pull that stunt again. The marks should close up without any scarring.”

Uryuu stands up, flexing his bow arm carefully. It feels fine, and it’s nice that he won’t have to wrap it up or wear long sleeves to avoid questions. He can just wave them away with some excuse about acupuncture.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely. “I’m glad we could come to you for help.”

Urahara waves him away flippantly. “Don’t mention it, kid. Just don’t go getting into more trouble, you hear?”

Urahara doesn’t get it, but he doesn’t mean ill, either. Uryuu knows he’s worried, almost like a parent, over each of them. He always has been. He’s struggled with the ethical choice of sending children into battle, and he must doubt sometimes whether he made the right choice. He gets it. He knows so many others who don’t bother with ethics at all. So he can’t be angry with old Sandal-Hat, not really. He’s trying his best. That’s all Uryuu can ask of him. Of anyone. Still, it leaves him with the bitter feeling that the only one who can really empathize is Ryuuken, of all people. His entire heritage is just a wasteland, now. He’s not quite sure what to believe in anymore. All his dreams are filled with images of that fight with the Espada, and the shining steel of Ichigo’s bankai.

He thinks, briefly, that if he keeps having these dreams, then maybe he hasn’t really forgiven Ichigo for what happened that day, somewhere deep down. And if he can’t forgive something that was out of Ichigo’s control, then what forgiveness could he ever expect from everyone else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew.  
> please let me know if I'm misrepresenting any funerary customs and I'll make the appropriate edits - I tried to research as best as I could, but I am an outsider with an outsider's cultural blinkers.


	7. rewind, replace

Kurosaki works part-time at the clinic now that he’s back for the summer. He gets off at about five in the afternoon, so by the time Uryuu arrives, he’s already outside, leaning on the fence that encloses the tiny yard.

“Hey, Ishida,” he says. “Took you long enough.”

“It’s not like you live close by, Kurosaki.”

“Whatever.” Fishing out a pair of keys from his pocket, he unlocks the gate and gestures for Uryuu to come in with a nod of his head.

The yard is maybe twenty square feet of long grass and flat shale stones topped with wilting potted plants and poorly-trimmed boxwood bushes. It’s not like anyone in the family has time to garden, so he’s not surprised that it’s so overgrown. There’s a bench that can’t possibly fit more than one grown person in the corner, half-hidden behind some giant ceramic planters, a wooden plank on top of two cinderblocks. An abandoned plastic rocking horse provides a second seat.

“The old man checked out early today. With our luck, he’s going to get a bunch of emergency calls tonight,” Kurosaki grouses, sitting down on the rocking horse. It’s sun-bleached beige except for smears of dirt and green lichen. He pictures a very small Kurosaki Ichigo riding his plastic steed around the yard and has to stifle his laughter.

Uryuu sits down on the makeshift bench, examining the overgrown jade plant to his left. It’s one of the only things sucessfully growing in this weather. Its waxy, thick leaves make it good at surviving heat waves. A little rain goes a long way, which is good, considering that no one ever seems to water anything in this garden.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asks, picking a splinter out from the planks.

Kurosaki waves his hands for a few moments like he’s trying to form a sentence. It doesn’t help. He groans and slaps his hands over his face, leaning back on the rocking horse. He’d probably fall over if his feet weren’t planted firmly on the ground.

“Look,” he says finally, “I’m really bad at this stuff.” His expression is uncomfortably serious.

“Bad at what, Kurosaki?”

“Talking. No, shut up, I mean _talking,_ like – about _things._ Like Hueco Mundo.” He looks vaguely nauseous now and Uryuu can see where this is going. It’s going to a very, very uncomfortable place.

“We don’t have to talk about that. Ever,” he adds. “It’s ancient history.”

But Kurosaki insists on steering them into rough waters.

“It’s not ancient history. I never—” He cuts himself off and tries again. “Look. I put everyone through a lot. Inoue especially. It’s not what I wanted to do.”

Uryuu sighs and adjusts his glasses. “You don’t have to apologize. You didn’t force any of us to come with you.”

“I know.” He sounds much older than nineteen now. “I’m grateful. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel responsible.”

“You were pulled onto the front lines of an interdimensional war when you were fifteen,” Uryuu says pointedly. “Nobody blames you for anything.”

“It seems like you do.”

He finally looks Kurosaki in the eye. His face is impassive, brown eyes fixing him with an even gaze. There’s no anger in his voice, just a little curiosity. It doesn’t stop that spark of irritation from flaring up.

“I don’t. I never have. I take full responsibility for everything I do.”

Kurosaki flings his arms out to either side. “Then why don’t you talk to me? Or any of us? Chad almost had to pry you out of your apartment.”

“And you running away to Asahikawa is any different?”

He almost regrets saying that when Kurosaki’s arms drop down limply and he frowns.

“‘Running away’?” he repeats incredulously. When Uryuu stays silent, he runs his hands through his short hair and sighs. “I’m… I don’t know. Maybe.”

That admission is much more than he expected and his anger drops away, leaving a hollow pit in his stomach. Everyone ran. Why wouldn’t they? Their lives have been nothing but a bad dream for the past four years. Karakura is too full of memories.

“Did you have dreams?” he asks abruptly, because he has to know if they’re all like this. Like him. Kurosaki tilts his head, but nods as if he understands what Uryuu is asking.

“Yeah. A lot at first, but not as much lately. I don’t think they’ll ever go away, but…” He shrugs. “It was hard. I didn’t want to talk to anyone except Zangetsu for a long time.”

“I wondered,” Uryuu says. “How everyone else was dealing with it. Being away. Not having – this. Us. Seems like everyone did fine.” A bitter tone creeps into his voice. It’s not like he resents anyone for being healthy and happy and for coping in all of the right ways. It’s just –

Kurosaki fixes him with an inquisitive stare. “What do you dream about?”

He measures his words carefully before he says anything, running a hundred different ways to say it through his head. At first, he considers not saying anything at all, or lying, but then he remembers that Kurosaki brought it up, that he’s probably waiting for him to say something about it and there’s a part of him that wants to blurt everything out so _someone_ will know. And, perversely, for someone to feel guilty about _leaving him behind,_ even when he knows that they were all bound to go their separate ways eventually.

_It’s just that I thought we would stay here forever, you know?_

Stupid. He’s being stupid.

“Hueco Mundo,” he says. “I dream about your battle with that Espada. Ulquiorra. I don’t know why. Worse things have happened to both of us.”

“I _stabbed_ you,” Kurosaki says, and he looks as if he’s tasted something bitter. “Is that what you remember?”

“It wasn’t you.”

“It _was_ me. Hollow or not, that was me,” he says forcefully.

“I didn’t tell you that so you could start blaming yourself for my problems, Kurosaki.”

“I’m – how is that not my fault?”

“It doesn’t _matter._ I don’t blame you. Whether you blame yourself or not is your own prerogative.”

Kurosaki’s mouth snaps closed and he struggles to reply. Uryuu doesn’t let him interrupt again. He’s put his foot in it and if he were in literally any other situation the idea of spilling his problems to _him_ of all people would be nothing more than a joke. He’s reaching for something. A truce, maybe. An understanding that they never thought to ruin by talking about it.

“It feels like a punch, at first. I remember that. It never really hurts. It’s… cold, and heavy. And I can hear you talking but I don’t know what you’re saying, and Inoue-san is crying. That’s it. I never thought of that thing as _you,_ Kurosaki. You were the one who thought letting Ulquiorra chop off your arm was a good idea.” He laughs mirthlessly. “I don’t know why I always dream about that. Why not the time I almost killed all of you? Why not Haschwalth? Why not Ryuuken—” He stops. He’s not ready for that. “What I’m saying is, yes, I thought I was going to die, but I’ve thought that about a thousand times and it’s not new, and neither of us can change anything about it.”

His words reverberate off of the low walls and he realizes how loud he’s been talking. Kurosaki leans back, staring at the sky for a few moments, then shakes his head.

“Okay.”

He raises his eyebrows. “That’s it? ‘Okay’?”

“I chose Asahikawa because I didn’t want to be reminded of everything that happened here. Maybe it was running away. I didn’t – I thought we were all…” He trails off uncertainly, shrugging. “I don’t know. I thought I was going to come back and everything would be back to normal. I guess that was stupid.”

“Inoue said something about that too.” He bites his lip.

Kurosaki’s head tilts to the side. “She did?”

“She… we all thought this was going to last forever. And it didn’t. It couldn’t even last three months.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. It’s not a happy look, but it’s not sad, either.

“Yeah. We’re not very good friends, are we?”

He sighs, and he’s going to regret saying this because it’s definitely going to be held over his head later.

“I consider you to be a very close friend, Kurosaki.”

His smile this time is genuine, but a little smug, too. “Wow, Ishida, you okay?” he drawls.

Scratch that. Instant regret. “If you ever tell anyone I said that, they’ll never find your body.”

“That famous Quincy honor,” Kurosaki grumbles.

He doesn’t respond to that, just looks away, to the faint smudge of cloud hanging above them. The sun is falling in the sky, and the air is suffused with golden light. The rays coming over the low wall catch specks of dust and buzzing gnats on their way to the grass. Shadows are longer now. It’s the third week of August. The sun is setting earlier and the days are shorter. Too familiar. On an evening like this, with the sky exactly as it is, he can remember the ice of Tsukishima’s sword cutting through his shoulder. He can’t blame everyone else for leaving as soon as they could, but –

“Hey, why don’t you carry your cross anymore?”

Uryuu sighs, thinks about all of the responses he could throw back at a question that he doesn’t really want to answer. If he’s been honest so far, he might as well come clean of everything. And if not to Kurosaki, then who? He trusts him with his life. He should be able to tell him anything. But he can’t, not quite.

“I should,” he says. “I didn’t, when I was in school. I… decided to leave all of the Quincy stuff behind. My grandfather always talked about the good we could do. So did I. But who believes that after the Wandenreich? After they almost destroyed the world? Every time I put on that cross I thought about that. Generations of us, bred to kill shinigami. Me, spared to kill you. So I stopped.”

“You know I don’t care about that kind of bullshit,” Kurosaki says bluntly, waving his arm. “Quincy, shinigami, whatever. It’s too complicated. And it’s not worth my time. The only thing that matters is that you’re Ishida Uryuu, and you stay that way. The Ishida Uryuu I know won’t let his pride get in the way of protecting his friends.”

Kurosaki doesn’t understand. His _pride_ is the entire reason they’re here.

“Are you sure about that? I was too proud to tell you I was infiltrating the Sternritter – too proud to tell you about the Fullbring – I only trusted myself. And there are things I’ve never even told you about. _Quincy pride_ has almost killed us all countless times.”

An exasperated shake of the head. “Look. As far as I’m concerned, you can put your cross down, you can pick it back up, you can listen to me or not. But you decided to engage a Hollow with no weapons and put me and Chad in danger. Either you stay out of it and let us handle everything, or you go in properly equipped and ready to respond. You have to pick one. Otherwise you’re going to end up in the hospital again and your father’s gonna kick my ass.”

Uryuu looks at him, frustration mounting. “Why do you keep acting like you’re responsible for me?”

“Because I _am!”_

His shout reverberates in the small space. Uryuu catches the brief movement of curtains in a neighbor’s window and his face burns. Kurosaki’s face is pinched in something like anguish and he can’t look at him, can barely contain the fury that makes his hands shake and clench.

“I’m responsible for you, and Karin, and Yuzu, and Inoue, and Chad, and Keigo and Tatsuki and Mizuiro and Chizuru. For my friends. That’s what being a shinigami _is._ That’s what being a _friend_ is. Don’t you feel that way, too?” He pauses, and when Uryuu doesn’t respond he takes a breath, letting it out slowly, trying to calm down. “I’m sorry. For not being here. I needed to get out.”

“You don’t get it,” he says, voice thick.

“What? What am I not getting, Ishida?”

Wordlessly, he holds out his arm. The dots of his ruptured meridians are crimson pinpricks against his pale skin. Kurosaki’s brow furrows as he finds them. After a moment, he draws it back, hiding the worst of it against his shirt.

“The Quincy,” he says, trying to steady his voice, “were created by Yhwach. We are his children. The world my grandfather fought for had no chance of existing. He didn’t care that Ryuuken married someone who wasn’t pure-blooded. He didn’t care that I was – that my mother was _gemischt._ It didn’t matter to him. He wanted peace with the shinigami, among the Quincy… But I don’t know if he knew about Yhwach like we do. How he would call everyone back to his side and march on the Seireitei. All of the work he did was pointless. Yhwach designed us to destroy the world for him. Whatever I was taught, everything I believed, was wrong. When I realized that, all I wanted to do was kill the monster that murdered my mother. I wasn’t particularly concerned about honor, or pride. Or dying.”

Kurosaki makes a weird strangled noise at that. “We would have helped you, you know. All you had to do was ask.”

“And I didn’t, because I thought I would be able to do it myself. I thought he was just arrogant. I didn’t know he was _Almighty._ Kurosaki – from the beginning, Quincy have always been untrustworthy. Not only because of pride, or arrogance, but because we were designed to destroy shinigami. Maybe things could have been different. If they had killed Yhwach when they had the chance. But now there’s nothing left except the memory of the people he murdered.”

He doesn’t know whether Kurosaki understands or not. He certainly seems to be thinking it over. There’s a pensive look on his face, but what he says catches him off guard.

“How long did you know my mother was a Quincy?”

“I didn’t,” he admits. “Ryuuken told me a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been.”

“My old man told me that summer. He also told me she was supposed to marry your father.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” So he _had_ been matched with her.

“What was your mother like?”

He has to really dig for those memories. Black hair, like his, and wide eyes. Soft hands and a laugh like a little bell.

“Kind,” he says finally. “She was – kind. Careful. Quiet.”

“My mom was really loud.” Kurosaki grins sheepishly. “But she never yelled at us. And she was always looking out for me.”

“That sounds nice.”

The other boy is silent for a moment, as if expecting something more. When nothing more comes, he starts talking again.

“That’s my point. You make it sound like Quincy are – _were_ all walking bombs ready to go off at any second. But people like the ones who raised us, they defied Yhwach by keeping us alive. Our choices matter. Our fates aren’t decided for us just because we were born to one family or another. I’d bet my life that neither of our mothers believed that.”

“It’s not that easy,” he protests weakly.

“It is. What about you? _Uryuu._ You might be selfish and proud, but you’re our friend. You were ready to give everything to keep me human. You lost your arm for Inoue. I stabbed you, I almost _killed_ you, and you don’t even blame me. And you’re telling me not to trust you.”

He’s lost. “Then what should I do?”

Kurosaki shrugs. “That’s up to you. What was that you said earlier? ‘I don’t blame you. Whether you blame yourself or not is your own prerogative.’”

There is mutual understanding, unspoken, when the corner of Uryuu’s mouth quirks up in a defeated half-smile.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Just... keep in touch, Kurosaki. You know?”

“Ichigo. And I will.”

“Ichigo,” he repeats.

Kurosaki – _Ichigo –_ ducks his head to hide his grin but offers his fist. Uryuu bumps it lightly with his knuckles.

When he walks home from the bus stop that evening he stares up at the silhouette of his apartment complex against the sky, muted lights shimmering from behind closed curtains. Standing still, he can hear the distant whisper of traffic, the silvery song of cicadas, a door opening and closing. The air is cool on his skin.

For once, tomorrow is clear as day. He has breached the surface of the water. Something is changing; they are all changing, and the distance between them is growing larger by the day. These bridges that they build will need to be repaired three months from now, a year from now, and when the rivers swell with rain he will need them more than ever.

His heart is beating like a drum. Perhaps subconsciously, he’d thought Kurosaki wouldn’t understand. But he does, and suddenly everything is new and strange, vibrant, full of substance when before he had been wandering through echoes of what he remembered the world to be like.

He feels like a ghost that has been put back into its real body.


	8. things we say in the rain

In the dog days of summer vacation, Uryuu wakes up later than usual, blearily opening his eyes to the stack of things-to-be-repaired stacked on top of his desk. It takes him a moment to register the time – it’s eleven in the morning, and he needs to get all of these done in the next week if he wants to pay his rent on time. A couple of shirts with ripped seams, a knit sweater with a hole in it, a pair of jeans that needs patching. Not that much, but it puts him on good terms with his neighbors, who compensate him generously. They’re all very nice people who deserve to live in a place that’s less broken-down, under a landlord who’s not such a tight-fisted grouch.

He sits up and swings his legs out of bed, yawns, and rubs his eyes, absentmindedly patting the night stand and picking up his glasses. Unfolding the earpieces, he slips them on and blinks a couple of times. It’s brighter than he’s used to.

The routine is the same, though. Bathroom, kitchen, back to the table, work the hours away, study a bit, kitchen, living room for some Ghost Bust, then back to studying. Everything is a little bit off, though, and he has to cut some study hours because he slept through his alarm.

His afternoon is peppered with messages from the group chat that Orihime set up a week ago. She sends them all pictures of her lunch break with Tatsuki and Chizuru; Keigo tells a lame joke that doesn’t bear repeating, ever; Chad and Ichigo groan about their jobs. Uryuu occasionally gets in a witty comment before he goes back to repairing seams or patching holes. It’s nice, almost like they’re in the same building, just in separate rooms.

When Ryuuken calls him that night, he checks the clock again. Just after twelve. He’s left work late today. Probably against his better judgement, he picks up, says tersely, “Hello?”

_“Uryuu. You’re still awake.”_

He’s not sure what Ryuuken expects from this. “What do you want?”

Silence, then a sigh. _“I wanted to apologize.”_

“For what?”

_“For not helping you manage everything after you returned.”_

“You don’t need to apologize for your habits,” he snipes, leaning back in his chair away from the table. The yellow child-sized dress shirt lies spread out on the table, its wound clearly exposed and only partway stitched up.

Ryuuken doesn’t take the bait. Unusual. _“Still. You needed support. I could have given you mine, but I didn’t. I assumed… many things that I shouldn’t have.”_

There’s a long silence. Uryuu presses his lips together and stares at the unfinished shirt, the butter-yellow thread pulled through the eye of his needle. Ryuuken never acts like this. He never apologizes for anything. His absence after they returned to the human world barely even registered on Uryuu’s radar. What’s so different about this time that he wants to apologize? Is this a trick?

_“I’m sorry.”_

The way Ryuuken says it – soft, almost gentle, restrained – _ah._ He really did talk that way once, a long time ago. Uryuu’s memories of that voice stop just after the first funeral. He’d almost forgotten.

“Why?”

_“Uryuu…”_

He clenches his right hand into a fist and brings it down toward the tabletop, but stops himself. No need to worry the neighbors with these thin walls. He lets his open palm drop to rest on the blue-gridded cutting mat.

“Why?” he asks, voice rough. “After all these years, after everything you could have apologized for and didn’t – why now? Why should I believe anything you tell me? And you can’t say ‘because I’m your father.’ If there’s anything I’ve learned since I started training with Grandfather and _associating with shinigami,_ it’s that a good person treats everyone with dignity, regardless of whether they’re enemies or not. That’s the kind of thing a father should teach a son. That’s how a father should _treat_ a son. So tell me why you’re suddenly trying so hard to be fatherly when you’ve thrown away so many chances before!”

Uryuu wipes his eyes furiously, hand shaking. This is what he’s wanted to hear all along, isn’t it? That Ryuuken has seen the error of his ways and regrets how he’s been treating his son? Maybe that’s why he can’t believe it, because all of his childhood fantasies about honor and heroism and virtue have crumbled into so much dust, and it’s cruel of the universe to dangle this one in front of his face before snatching it away, too. How is he supposed to forgive the arrow in his chest? How is he supposed to forgive years and years of not being good enough? He tries to regulate his breathing and calm himself down, but Ryuuken always robs him of emotional discipline just by being present.

 _“I was trying to keep you out of a war that all but destroyed our people. And… I know now that I should have spent that time preparing you for it instead. I didn’t want you to follow your mother, or Masaki-san. Somewhere along the way, I gave up.”_ There’s a crackling sigh. _“Maybe a man like me isn’t meant to be a father. Kanae – your mother was generous enough for two people. I relied on her to be kind. When she died, I found out that the only thing I could offer you was discipline. I didn’t know how to be gentle. I still don’t know how she did it. So for that, I also apologize.”_

He bites his lip and digs his fingernail into the skin of his thigh, just to check that he isn’t hallucinating or dreaming.

_“I called you tonight because I’m taking a leave of absence from work at the hospital. You are welcome to visit anytime you like.”_

“A leave of absence?”

 _“Yes. I haven’t had one of those in about ten years.”_ He pauses. _“I’d like to take the chance to start over.”_

It almost feels too good to be true. Against all evidence to the contrary, he’s sure that he’s dreaming, and what would it hurt to say “yes” in his dreams?

“Okay,” he says in a thick voice. “I don’t forgive you. But for Mom’s sake, I’ll do this.”

 _“I’ll call again tomorrow.”_ Then, in an odd tone, _“Sleep well.”_

The phone beeps in his ear to signal that Ryuuken has ended the call. He slowly closes it and puts it on the table. His cheeks are still wet when he reaches for the needle again, but he’s shaking too hard to make neat stitches. It’s like he’s seen a ghost. And maybe, in a way, he has – the ghost of a man who died along with his wife. Part of him wants to say _too little, too late._ The damage has already been done and he’s not sure they can ever repair it. For another part of him, it’s a dream come true, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make everything right. He doesn’t know which part to listen to.

Uryuu slumps back in his chair and closes his eyes. It would be so easy if he could just forget all of the years he spent in that house walking on eggshells, yearning for recognition, trying to change the expression on his father’s face to anything except that bored and absent look. It’s not like there weren’t good times, too – he remembers going to the park, to festivals, a little birthday celebration here and there – but they are so few and far between that their colors have washed out over the years and all he can remember is faint, incomplete images. He can’t just focus on a handful of good moments and ignore the bad ones in order to convince himself that Ryuuken is capable of being a good person.

What’s the chance that he’ll even succeed at his goal, anyway? His father is a creature of habit, and habits are hard to break. There’s no telling if, or more likely _when,_ he’ll regain his senses and return to being the man he knows: domineering, cold, ruthless, chillingly pragmatic, and smug. Saying “yes” to his whims during a momentary lapse in control is bound to end poorly for him. Maybe he should call back now and reject his offer. It wouldn’t be any less humiliating than finding out he’d been played for a fool a month from now.

After a long moment, he picks up his phone and opens up his contact list. Instead of calling Ryuuken, he dials Ichigo’s number. Hopefully he’ll be awake, or someone in his house will be awake.

Several rings later, he breathes out in relief as Ichigo picks up.

_“Ishida?”_

“Can I talk to your father, Ichigo?”

_“Huh? Why would you want to talk to – never mind, don’t tell me. I’ll go get him.”_

He can hear Ichigo muttering under his breath as he stomps through the house.

_“Hey, old man, someone on the phone for you.”_

_“Haah? This late?”_

There’s a sound like a fingernail scraping over the speaker and he winces.

_“Hello?”_

“Good evening,  Kurosaki-san.”

_“Ishida-kun, is it? Do you need anything?”_

“Ah, no… Kurosaki-san, did you speak with Ryuuken today, by any chance?”

 _“Not today, no. The last time I talked with him was… let’s see… I think it was Monday, so it’s been about three days. Why, did he call you?”_ His voice takes on a hint of suspicion at the end.

“Yes, about fifteen minutes ago. Did he tell you he was taking a leave of absence?”

_“I was the one who recommended it in the first place. I’m glad he took my advice.”_

“Oh. I see. Actually, I called to ask – has he been speaking with you at all? About me?”

His hand curls tightly around the phone as he waits for the reply. Ichigo’s father sighs on the other end of the line and makes a contemplative _tsk_ ing noise. He hasn’t said no, so he must be deciding how much to reveal.

 _“Yes,”_ he says carefully. _“He’s told me several times that he’s concerned about your ‘psychological state,’ if that’s what you mean. He hasn’t been in a good place recently, so if he’s said anything rash…”_

“Do you think – would you trust anything he says right now? Or do you think he’s just having a – I don’t know, a bout of impulsivity?”

_“Ryuuken is a man of his word. Whatever else he’s been or failed to be in the past, when he says he’ll do something, he does it. I’ve seen him in worse places than this, so I can vouch for him. Even if what he promises sounds impossible, he’ll do it. He does have, um, how should I say this... a flair for the dramatic. But you already knew that.”_

Uryuu thinks it over. He trusts Ichigo’s father more than his own, but that’s not saying much. They’re closer to each other than Ryuuken is to him, which might warp Isshin’s perspective on the whole issue.

Maybe it’s because he wants so desperately to believe that his mother left behind something of value, something worth being salvaged, but he decides to take Isshin’s word as truth. It’s like a weight lifting off of his shoulders. Something like helium fills his chest. It could be happiness, but he doesn’t trust it.

“Thank you, Kurosaki-san.”

_“No problem, kiddo. You know, if you ever need anything—”_

He hangs up. They’ll just excuse it as one of his behavioral quirks.

There’s no chance that he’s going to get anything done tonight, so he turns off his desk lamp, then shucks his shirt and tosses it into the hamper, climbing into bed. His glasses return to the side table and he squints at his alarm clock to make sure it’s set. Then he collapses onto the mattress and stares at the dark ceiling.

Ryuuken isn’t a Quincy. And now Uryuu isn’t, either. He wonders if they’re becoming more similar as time goes by. There are pictures of him in the house of when he was young – he had a round face and wide eyes. Now, he can see his father’s pointed chin and narrow, nearsighted eyes in the mirror. When he is older and his hair starts turning white, maybe he’ll become just as cold and removed. It seems like an unavoidable progression. One day he’s going to wake up and look in the mirror and Ryuuken will be staring back at him. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when that happens. 

* * *

_Uryuu is standing on the plateau. It feels strange. The river flowing above him should be pressing him to his knees, but he’s on his feet for once, staring through Orihime’s shield. The Espada is charcoal smoke and cold green fire, locking horns with a devil made of red-gold sparks and deadly white mist. The false stars are closer than ever, sliding like pale egg yolks down the black dome of the sky. Orihime is screaming. The spirits of Shun Shun Rikka twinkle around her, pinpricks of light darting nervously from side to side like mosquitoes, unsure of what to do._

_He turns to her, raises his left hand to try to touch her shoulder. He wants to say,_ I’m not dead yet. This isn’t over. I can save him. _But it doesn’t matter, and his arm falls off at the elbow like a loose baby tooth. It lands on the dusty floor with a dull thump. Then the devil’s masked face swims into his vision, wicked stripes and a mouth full of fangs; and he_ is _dead, and it_ is _over, because Tensa Zangetsu erupts from his stomach like the branch of a young tree, just like the arrow his father buried in his heart deep beneath Karakura Hospital, and all the friendship in the world can’t save him from Ichigo’s demon now._

_In a way, though, he’s glad that he thought he could stop him. Grateful to have had that much trust in anybody, to have friends that cared about him. This was worth it. He wishes he could have done more for them, but he isn’t strong enough to stand up, let alone defend Orihime. He tried, and they will understand. It’s okay, because Ichigo rises from the dead and he’s just Ichigo this time, the Espada blown away in the wind, and Orihime’s love for him was so strong that it called him back from the grave._

_His head is full of air. His body is bloodless and heavy. Somewhere below them, Chad and Rukia and Renji and the others are fighting for their lives. They’ll make it. He falls asleep knowing they will._


	9. last year's secrets

Once his keiraku have healed and the little dots are gone, Uryuu dedicates two days to finishing all of his repair orders. Then he drags out a cardboard box from his closet and opens it. Inside are the remains of the Sanrei Glove, the latin-style focus cross, his old costume, a handful of gintou, one Seele Schneider, the Reichsapfel, a pad of graphing paper with hasty notes scribbled onto the first seven pages, one roll of gauze, and one roll of kinesiology tape.

Sitting on the floor, he packs the tape, the gauze, the notes, the gintou, three days’ changes of clothing, bug repellent, a towel, a bag of toiletries, his house keys, and a roll of toilet paper into a duffel bag. He hauls it out to the living room, then heads back to grab the box cooler and take his cross from the bedside table. He makes a beak shape with his fingers and slips the silver chain onto his wrist. It’s been long enough that the weight feels unnatural.

The cooler is stocked with water, the remaining contents of his fridge, and a few gel ice packs. Hopefully he won’t need those or the gauze, but it never hurts to be prepared for the worst. He hasn’t really practiced in over half a year. The duffel goes over his shoulder and he carries the cooler in his hand.

Halfway to his old training ground, he senses someone following him. Several someones. He rolls his eyes and suppresses his reiatsu the rest of the way there. He won’t be able to avoid them once he starts his training in earnest, but he’d rather not deal with them just yet.

It’s midmorning when he gets to the waterfall. The water is clear and cold, and the shale banks glisten in the sunlight. Long grass bends under its own weight and trails in the water. It’s stayed the same all these years. He remembers sitting with his grandfather in the clearing just beyond here and listening, enraptured, to the story of the Quincy – knights in flowing white robes with tall silver bows, protecting the weak, fighting against all odds to vanquish their evil foes, the Hollows. He knows now that a lot of those stories were exaggerated for the drama, even the ones about Yhwach. To make children proud of their ancestors, proud to pull weapons from thin air until their fingers bled. To give them the pride of the Quincy.

He takes off his shoes and puts them under the old beech tree next to his duffel bag. He winces as the roots dig into his feet. The cooler goes into the stream after he takes out a water bottle, far enough away from the waterfall that the force of the current won’t rip the lid off when it’s submerged. A heavy rock goes on top to hold it in place. Returning to the duffel, he pulls out the notepad, flips to a blank page, and scratches out a quick checklist of exercises. Then he sprays the bug repellent on his arms and legs and starts stretching.

It’s a familiar routine. He remembers Souken guiding him through it the first time: swing your arms like this, loosen your muscles with such and such a motion, extend slowly, be mindful of your breathing. Uryuu carefully works through all of his muscle groups. He’s lost flexibility in his legs and arms. When he does the finger stretches, he can tell that some of the important calluses have gone soft, and that the muscles in his wrist and forearm are significantly weaker than they were a year ago. Nothing he didn’t expect, but nonetheless, he’s disappointed. His endurance is going to be shit, his strength is going to be shit, and his agility is going to be shit. He can’t fix this in three days. It’s going to take months of strict training to get back to proficiency, and it’s going to make him tired in class, and it’s going to interfere with his ability to do repairs.

But what’s the alternative? Urahara spends most of his time doing work for Soul Society and can only cover for him when he’s in class, his friends no longer live here, his father is managing the city hospital, and they’re running out of favors to call in from shinigami in neighboring areas. He has to prepare for the inevitable. Someday there won’t be anyone else there to take care of it, and it’ll be up to him to protect Karakura.

Uryuu takes a deep breath and stands with his feet a shoulder-width apart, his left foot in front. He holds out his left arm, hand open and fingers spread apart, then feels for the concentration of reishi. Different areas have different concentrations – graveyards and other haunted places tend to have more reishi, and abandoned places tend to have less. There’s a decent amount here, and he draws it into his blood as he inhales. It feels like an electric charge, gathering like static in the cross, and in a fraction of a second the white longbow materializes in his hand, the grip as solid as wood. His fingers wrap around it instinctively. He doesn’t even have to think about how to form it anymore. The muscle memory does it instantaneously.

It _is_ difficult to maintain it. He has to concentrate more than he remembers, keep the circulation of reishi consistent. The bow is an outpouring of the reishi that his body collects. Any disruption in the form of the bow is a reflection of the erratic flow of reishi in his body. He has to be calm, his breathing has to be perfect, his heartbeat has to be –

“So are you gonna shoot that thing or what?”

The bow vanishes and he whirls around to see Ichigo, Chad, and Orihime sitting on the ground behind him. He’d completely forgotten they were following him.

Ichigo must be able to tell from his expression that he’s flustered, because he laughs. “Yeah, you didn’t think you could lose us for long, did you?”

“I really wanted to see how you train, Ishida-kun,” Orihime chirps, clenching her fists in front of her. “You wouldn’t let us watch you last time!”

“I-it would have been boring.” His cheeks are heating up. He’s not lying – training with the Sanrei Glove was basically trying to form a bow for two days and then shooting arrows almost nonstop for the next five.

“We wanted to help,” Chad says honestly. “Seeing as we only have about a week left before we leave again. Might as well pitch in.”

Of course, Ichigo has something else completely in mind.

“You wanna show me how to make one of those things?” He makes a gesture which could be interpreted in several vulgar ways but is probably intended to look like a bow. “My mom was a Quincy, right? I should know some of this stuff.”

He stares at him. “K - Ichigo, I don’t have time—”

“Sure you do,” he says flippantly. “I mean, how hard could it be?”

It occurs to him that Ichigo is actually serious about this. And that he’s goading him. It’s working. And it couldn’t hurt to review the basics.

“Chad, Inoue-san,” he says, and they look at him attentively. “Come back here in two days. Ichigo, get my house keys out of my bag. You’re going to go into my room – _don’t touch anything –_ and get a box out of my closet. Inside, you’ll see my old cross and something that looks like a silver ball. Bring those here and I’ll _think_ about training you.”

“Really?” Ichigo’s face brightens.

Uryuu sighs. “Really.”

“I still want to watch, though,” Orihime says, disappointed, and he almost doesn’t have the heart to deny her.

“Trust me, Inoue-san, I’m just going to be shooting arrows into that waterfall over and over again. In two days I’ll be doing some agility training. I’ll need you and Chad to help then.”

She crosses her arms but seems to accept it. Chad puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles at him. More than any praise, that smile suddenly gives him confidence. It’s like his doubts and worries weren’t really so big after all.

By the time they turn around to leave, Ichigo is gone, leaving Uryuu’s duffel open under the beech tree. He rolls his eyes, forms his bow, and starts his exercises. Ichigo won’t be back for another half hour at least, and he can start doing some things in the meantime.

* * *

There are a couple of different things Souken taught him to do. He’s come up with a few on his own, but he always starts with his grandfather’s first. Five sets of _Blitz-Spalier_ has his fingers sore; at the end of ten sets, it’s almost been half an hour, and he still has only half-assed control over his rate of fire. He can feel the split-second delays in the generation of each arrow. Mastering this exercise takes surgical precision. During the days where he was actively fighting, thirty sets of this in the same amount of time would have been hardly any trouble. He growls in frustration and readies his bow for another set.

It’s fifteen arrows, five at one per second, then five at five per second, then five at one per second. One, two, three, four, five, onetwothreefourfive, one, two, three, four, five. The waterfall absorbs them all with barely any complaint except a series of muted splashes.

Still not good enough, nowhere close. He’s having trouble focusing. Everything is still a little fuzzy. And Ichigo’s reiatsu is beginning to throb at the edge of his consciousness like a big, obnoxious, orange –

“Is this what you were talking about?” He fishes the silver ball out of his pocket, and it shines brilliantly in the sunlight. The old focus cross is dangling from his wrist. The sight of it is a little jarring, almost wrong, especially on a shinigami.

He lowers his bow. “Yes. It’s called a _Reichsapfel.”_

“A lai… _what?”_

“It means ‘empire-apple.’ Emperors in Europe used to hold them as a symbol of their power over the world. It’s a tool to help you control the material of the spirit world: reishi.”

Ichigo waves it around. “Is it like a wand?”

Uryuu sighs. “No. Take the cross off, sit down, and hold that. Try to sense the reishi around you and guide it into the key. It serves the same purpose as the cross, but there’s a mechanism inside that pulls on the reishi around you and makes it easier to attract. ”

Ichigo starts to sit down. “For how long?”

“Until you can do it.” It took him almost an entire day of concentration to be able to understand the principles behind even the most basic reishi manipulation. With his luck, it’ll take Ichigo a third of the time, and he’ll end up destroying the _Reichsapfel_ in the process. At least he’ll get some uninterrupted practice time out of it.

An additional five sets of _Blitz-Spalier_ for the delay, and he takes a drink from the water bottle. Ichigo is staring intensely at the silver ball. There’s a slight tension in the reishi around him, but barely any of it is Ichigo himself. His keiraku are completely closed off from the flow of spiritual particles in the area. He’s not sure if that’s normal – he’s the only one he knows who has gone through Seiren and he wasn’t spiritually aware enough as a child to pay attention to how the reishi interacted with his body. He just remembers breathing, and gradually it was like inhaling with his entire body.

He doesn’t want to admit it, but his fingers, forearms, biceps, and shoulders are getting sore. His body will eventually readjust to the influx of particles, but right now his meridians are overloading, and it feels like he has too much blood in his hands. On top of that, the sky is cloudless, providing no cover from the sunlight, and he’s sweating like a pig. He lets the bow dissipate and does another round of arm stretches while he looks at his checklist. Fifty-five sets of _Blitz-Spalier_  took about two hours – longer than usual. Next are firing frequency exercises, _Sprengel_ and _Übergrießen._ The rest of his time is going to be spent on _Taufe._ A faint dread settles in his stomach.

It’s almost noon. Ichigo has held out surprisingly long without exploding or nagging him, but he hasn’t made any discernible progress. Well, maybe that’s not completely accurate. His spiritual pressure is fluctuating wildly around him, presumably as he tries to force reishi into the ball.

“That’s not going to work,” he says. _Might as well give him a clue._

Ichigo lets out a groan of exasperation and falls back on the grass, staring at him accusingly.

“How the hell do I do it, then?”

A thought strikes him. “Kurosaki… do you even know what reishi feels like?”

Ichigo shrugs helplessly. “I mean, I can recognize it when you’re doing your archery stuff. It feels different from shinigami power.”

Uryuu waves his arms around, frustrated. “It’s everywhere! It feels like – humidity. It just _hangs_ there. Didn’t you sense how everything in Soul Society felt different? All the buildings there are made out of reishi.”

“It just felt normal to me,” Ichigo complains. “Are you sure there’s reishi _here?”_

He gives Ichigo a flat stare, pointing at his bow.

Ichigo grimaces. “Right… But then why can’t I feel it?”

“It takes time.” He drinks from the water bottle again, but his mouth still feels dry in the heat. Holding out the bow, he motions for Ichigo to touch it.

The other boy places his hand cautiously on the upper limb, brows furrowed in concentration.

The part of the bow under his hand disappears and Uryuu is clutching only the riser, the lower limb stretching out beneath it. He dissolves the rest and stares at the faint, almost indiscernible blue lines glowing on the surface of the Reichsapfel. Ichigo holds up his hand and stares at the ball in awe, his other hand still closed around thin air.

“I think I know what it feels like now,” he says as the lines fade from sight. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Uh, keep doing that until you can keep the ball glowing consistently.” It took him almost five hours to get to that point. Ichigo just beat him by about three. There’s no reason his pride should be stinging right now. It’s not like he knows how long these techniques _should_ take to learn.

“Like this?”

 _Holy shit._ There’s a significant draw in the flow of reishi around him and the ball is glowing with bright blue interconnected pentagons, five-armed crosses sprouting from the center of each. He watches for a few moments but he can’t detect any erratic jumps in the draw around him, just that it’s extremely high-volume. It’s Ichigo – there’s no point in making him do it for hours when he just masters skills instantly.

He sighs. “All right, put the cross on. I’ll show you how to make a bow.” This might not be the best idea, but as long as Ichigo is pointing away from him when he uses the thing, he probably won’t die from being shot in the head by a reckless shinigami.

Ichigo slides the chain onto his wrist and returns the ball to the duffel bag. He walks back quickly, an eager look on his face.

How did Souken teach him to do this? He rifles through his memories like cards in a filing cabinet, trying to recall his instructions. He forgets sometimes that Souken’s generation had more teachers, more students, more knowledge. All he knows about the traditional Quincy ways is what his grandfather told him during those brief years of training, and late nights poring over what old water-damaged, hand-bound manuals he could recover from his house after the funeral, deciphering the old German texts with the help of an online dictionary. He still has stacks of notebooks full of rough, inadequate translations in his closet somewhere.

He instructs Ichigo to plant his feet a shoulder-width apart, just like a ready stance in karate, except with the foot of his dominant side pointed sideways. The arm on the same side is held straight out and parallel to the ground, hand open, fingers outstretched, and head turned to look at the target, which should always be directly in front of the bow.

God, how _did_ Souken tell him how to form the bow? It feels like there’s a fist clenching around his heart. He’s probably forgotten it. All he remembers is the moment he was able to sustain a bow form, and all of the fizzled-out failures before that. He should have been paying more attention just in case he ever had to pass on the techniques. He’d been too young to think about that, though, and as a result he’s lost more memories of his grandfather, from whatever precious few he has left. That thought leaves an uncomfortable tightness in his chest and a lump in his throat.

“Using the cross as a gathering point for the reishi, you want to guide it into the shape of a bow, a very slight curve…” He draws a long, curved line in the air. “It should be centered around your hand. You also have to keep all of it spinning, like this.” He makes a stirring motion with his finger. “You won’t be able to see it, but you’ll be able to feel it. If you can keep it spinning, you can draw excess from the tip of each limb and connect them like this to form the string.” Pinching the two ends of the imaginary bow, he brings his hands together. “Then you create the arrow.”

He demonstrates by summoning a bow with less control than is normal for him nowadays. The reishi moves in a messy spiral and a lot of it is lost in overflow. It appears as a crude longbow made of blue light whose edges flicker like fire. He lets it dissipate and nods to Ichigo.

The first few times he tries the technique, the bow sputters out before it even takes shape because he can’t control the flow of reishi. On his fifth attempt, he creates an enormous blue curve of jagged light with a string as thick as three fingers put together. It’s almost as wide as Zangetsu’s first form. And as a result, Ichigo quickly loses control of this one, too. The result is an Ichigo-sized explosion that knocks both of them on their asses.

Uryuu groans as he pats the grass, fingers searching for his glasses. They’re pressed into his hand and he puts them on. Ichigo looks sheepish, but also excited.

“I did it! Just for a second, but I did it!”

“When you can keep it manifested for fifteen minutes straight, we’ll move onto the next exercise.”

The sun is getting pretty high. He needs to move on in his practice schedule or he’ll end up packing more into the next two days and end up totally exhausted.

While Ichigo tries determinedly to summon a bow, Uryuu returns to _Sprengel,_ aiming into the base of the waterfall where the chaotic forces of the current will deflect the force of his arrows. He’s supposed to fire as many as he can within the span of three seconds. So far, he’s managed up to fifty. _Licht Regen_ is supposed to be composed of thousands. It doesn’t seem like he can focus well enough to do that. His senses seem to have dulled during his brief retirement. Even with the fog of his isolation lifted, his thoughts still aren’t as clear and focused as he knows they can be.

He looses fifty-three arrows in his next volley, then fifty-six. After another half-hour, he manages to get his volley up to seventy. The last few disappear into the churning water, kicking up sprays of mist. A break, then he’ll work it up to eighty. After that, _Übergrießen._ Shading his eyes with his hand, he looks up at the sun and judges it to be noon, more or less. He might as well eat now.

Uryuu heaves the rock off of the top of the cooler and heaves it out of the water, taking out the rice and pickled vegetables. He can almost sense Ichigo perking up before he opens his mouth.

“You brought lunch!”

“I brought enough food for _me_ for three days. If you want lunch, go get your own.”

Ichigo frowns sadly. “That’s… so cold…”

“Just go back to town for a while. You’re not going to miss anything cool, you know. I keep telling everyone…”

Ichigo heads off with a cocky _see ya later, sensei_ and Uryuu is alone again. He looks down at his lunch. The rice has become hard and stiff in the cold, the grains sticking together in clumps. He has to carve them out with his spoon. No use using chopsticks with food this uncooperative. He eats quickly, waits a while to let his stomach digest, then puts everything back in the cooler and stretches again.

With new strength in his limbs, he hits eighty-five arrows per volley easily. His optimism is recovering, and he moves on to _Übergrießen_ with confidence. It’s essentially the same exercise, but he has more time to collect reishi and can thus create a larger volley. He hits one hundred arrows in five seconds within the first set, and one hundred and fifty within the second. Ichigo returns as he hits two hundred in five and a half seconds. It’s much easier when he can actually gather the appropriate amount of reishi needed for such a volume of arrows.

The other boy doesn’t say anything and simply resumes trying to summon a bow. Uryuu watches for a while. He’s improving at a steady rate, but the bow is still volatile. He holds a flickering form in his outstretched hand for about two minutes before it blinks out of existence. At least he’s learned from his first success. Nothing’s blowing up anymore.

By mid-afternoon, he’s rotating between _Sprengel_ and _Übergrießen,_ and his fingers are raw and stinging. When he takes a moment to actually look at them, he finds that they’re actually kind of swollen. He sighs and squats next to the stream to trail them in the freezing water. Souken had used some kind of recirculation technique to ease the pain when he was a child, but he doesn’t think it’ll work if he uses it on himself, so he settles for numbing them and trying to soothe his raw nerves and dilated blood vessels.

Ichigo eventually reaches frustration overload and comes over to sit next to him.

“How long did it take you to be able to do this?” He tilts his head like a curious dog.

“The bow? Two weekends,” Uryuu replies. “My grandfather said I was a fast learner, but I don’t exactly have anyone to compare with.”

“Oh.” Ichigo scratches the back of his head. “I figured it was hard. Guess we don’t really know how hard.”

He shrugs. “It’s supposed to be frustrating. You have to have perfect control and consider all factors. You’re making good progress, though.”

Ichigo flexes his fingers. “I hope so. Oh – I saw clothes in your bag. Are you… staying out here?”

“Yes. If we were still in high school I’d take the whole week off, but I need to get back to work soon, so it’s just three days.”

“Why can’t you go home to sleep?”

He shrugs. “It’s more efficient this way. I don’t sleep that much during training.” Taking his hands out of the water, he wipes them off on the hem of his shirt. His fingers are numb but still tender, like he’s been running them over fine-grain sandpaper for the last few hours. “The Quincy train for the hunt. They track down their prey and outlast them.”

Ichigo raises his eyebrows. “So you have a sword-chainsaw-arrow… why?”

“Sometimes the opponent is too clever to be taken down with an arrow. The chainsaw is for dismemberment.” He takes a grim kind of satisfaction in seeing Ichigo’s queasy expression. “There’s a reason I don’t use _Seele Schneider_ all the time. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

Deciding not to invite any more gruesome imagery into his head, Ichigo shrugs and swipes at the cross hanging from Uryuu’s wrist with his finger, making it swing back and forth. Uryuu flips it up into his palm and gets up, stretching his arms.

He practices until the sun falls. Ichigo still can’t summon and hold a bow, but instead of giving up and going home, he stays in the clearing and continues to practice. Uryuu doesn’t like to admit it, but he’ll miss his company while he’s gone. He reminds himself that he’ll focus better now that there’s no one around to distract him. It’s not like Ichigo could have given him any pointers about his form or technique, anyway. There’s no one left who can do that anymore.

 _Licht Regen_ litters the clearing with bright blue arrows that fizzle out of existence after a brief moment. They glow in the darkness; he aims by the light of the moon and Ichigo’s intermittent attempts at creating a bow. He lets his own dissolve, releasing the reishi back into the environment. Flexing his fingers, he takes a quick break to eat. The cold rice has become tough and gummy – he should have cooked it with less water – and he has to break it up into bite-sized clumps by stabbing it with his spoon. The vegetables are sticking together, too, and his jaw becomes uncomfortably stiff with the effort of chewing. As he eats, he watches Ichigo gather reishi around his hand and extend it into a bow form. The resulting shape looks like a crescent moon, white and streaming excess particles like flames, and the light illuminates Ichigo’s furrowed brow and set jaw. He barely has time to materialize a string before it sputters out of existence again and plunges them back into darkness. This happens two more times before Uryuu puts the containers of food back in the cooler and stands up next to him.

“Try focusing on the palm first, then the fingers. It’s supposed to spread out, kind of, and holding it like that helps you control the shape. You’re growing it, not forcing reishi into a mold.”

He holds out his hand and curls his fingers. There’s a brief stir in the reishi around them, and then the small white bow he’s been using appears in his hand. Ichigo hums, folding his arms with a pensive expression.

“Okay,” he says. “Are my fingers supposed to hurt, though?”

“They didn’t for me, but with the amount of energy that you’re forcing through them, I’m not surprised. Take a break, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo grumbles and plops himself down next to the cooler, placing his sore hands on the cold, wet lid to help numb them. Uryuu does three more sets of _Spalier der Blitz_ and steels himself for _Taufe._

 _Taufe_ is a technique he used to train with the Sanrei Glove. It’s an endurance drill, like circular breathing or a pacer test. His goal is to loose as many arrows as he can for as long as he can. For the Glove, he’d had to keep up a more or less constant rate of fire for several hours a day, albeit at a much slower pace. Thankfully, he can just stop when he’s at his limit, and then do some cooldown exercises before going to sleep. Gauging by his current performance, he thinks he can go for ten minutes at full capacity, maybe a little more.

He plants his feet firmly and stretches out his hand, breathing deeply as he positions the bow in his hand. His left hand hangs at his side, as he no longer needs to use the drawstring to fire. Aiming into the water, he begins to funnel reishi through the guide of his index finger, and fires.

Faintly, he can hear Ichigo yelp as the barrage begins. It looks like a torrential outpour of light, arrows almost indistinguishable from each other. He’s easily reaching twenty arrows per second right now. After about a minute passes, he increases the firing rate to fifty. He can sustain that for quite a while, although he has to be more careful about his reishi manipulation to make sure he keeps his keiraku open and receptive. It’s easy to forget about that when focusing on accuracy or something else.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been going when he reaches one hundred and ten per second. His fingers ache. It almost feels like they’re freezing. He knows he can keep going, though. There’s a rhythm to it, receiving and forming and loosing the reishi in one swift and cyclical motion. It feels almost exhilarating, like a runner’s high, as he watches the arrows pour from his bow like lightning. Breathe, take in, release. His arm starts to tremble a little bit but he steels his muscles. Two hundred. He could keep going forever, it feels like. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ichigo staring with his jaw open and he smirks on the inside – it _is_ pretty impressive, if he doesn’t say so himself.

The tremors come back at two hundred and ten per second, and his fingers are cold. Usually they’re hot from the friction of the arrows and the pooling of blood in his fingertips, but he pushes through determinedly. The trajectory of his shots waver, and the inaccuracy throws him off enough to lose his circulatory rhythm. The arrows spray out intermittently like a sputtering flare, and eventually he lowers his hand and dissolves the bow. His heart is hammering in his chest and his hand isn’t cold anymore. In fact, it burns. Ichigo asks him if he’s all right. He lifts his arm up so that he can see it more clearly in the moonlight.

His fingers are bleeding, paper-thin cuts criss-crossing his skin in little red lines. If he looks closely, they litter his wrist and arm up to the elbow. They sting. His shoulder aches. He winces. No meridian damage, but the last thing he needed to do was re-injure himself.

“I need the gauze,” he mutters. “Um. In my bag.”

Ichigo complies wordlessly. Crimson droplets are welling up everywhere. The cuts litter the pads and tips of his fingers and the inside of his arm, and by the feel of it, they might go up to his shoulder. He can’t continue training like this. That hurts more than the physical pain. He’d come out to stay for three days, and as a result of his reckless behavior he won’t be able to train for at least another week while the cuts heal. He can almost hear Ryuuken’s snide comments.

Ichigo returns with bandages and gauze and his towel. Uryu squats next to the cooler, takes the water bottle out, and empties it over his arm, washing as much of it as possible. It probably doesn’t need antibiotics, but he’ll have a better look when he’s at home. The stinging feels like needles now as the water pours into the cuts. He grabs the towel from Ichigo without looking at his face and pats his arm dry, then takes the gauze and places it over his fingers and palm, tying it down loosely with bandages. The bleeding will be the most profuse there and he’d rather not drip blood on the ground as he walks home.

Replacing the lid on the cooler, he lifts the handle with his right arm and walks over to his duffel, zipping it up gingerly and throwing the strap over his shoulder before standing up.

Ichigo puts a hand on his right shoulder as he starts to walk off.

“Are you going home?”

“I can’t train with an arm like this.” It should be obvious.

“Let me take your cooler.”

He looks back at him this time. “You can go home, Kurosaki. I’ll be fine.”

“Just let me carry your fucking cooler, asshole,” Ichigo snaps. “You expect me to go home after watching you injure yourself? Fat chance.”

“It’s not serious. Same as when I saved your ass from getting eaten alive by Hollows during that stupid contest.”

“We weren’t friends then,” Ichigo says flatly, and physically takes the cooler from him. Uryuu glares at him and starts walking again. The cuts flare up in pain intermittently, but they’ll soon settle into a vague ache and dissipate altogether by the end of the night.

More than anything, he doesn’t want anyone to be around when he does stupid shit like this. He’s fine with carrying the cooler home by himself. He doesn’t need help. He’d rather go home and lick his wounds in peace. He’s had enough lectures on his failures and missed potential for a lifetime or two. Failure pisses him off. Ichigo’s pity certainly doesn’t help him to not be pissed off.

The walk back to his house takes half an hour. He keeps a stony silence the whole way. Ichigo doesn’t seem to mind, just keeps walking like they’re not two weirdos sneaking home at ten in the evening with a cooler, a duffel, and a taped-up arm between them. Nothing suspicious to see, obviously. They earn a few sideways glances but no one gawks, really, which is a blessing. Karakura is a more rambunctious town than most and people aren’t quite as reserved here as they probably are in Asahikawa. Maybe it’s the high concentration of spirit particles, or something like that.

Ichigo walks right up to his apartment and waits while Uryuu fumbles with his key and jams it into the lock, turning it and shouldering the door open. He hits the light switch with the back of his left hand and the interior of his apartment is revealed. As far as he can recall, Ichigo has never been in here. The other boy looks around, gaze sweeping over the ratty couch, the tiny television, the kitchenette, the table and chairs, and the blank white walls.

“At least put up some posters or something,” he grouses, carrying the cooler over to the small refrigerator. “This place looks like a hospital room.”

“If you’re just going to complain about the décor, you can leave anytime you want.” He slings the duffel onto the floor and walks to the bathroom to inspect the damage.

“It’s your house, dude.” Ichigo starts putting containers back in the fridge. “Just saying you should make it  _feel_ like your house, too.”

He switches on the light in the bathroom and peels off the bandages and gauze. There isn’t that much bleeding because the cuts are very shallow, but it still doesn’t look or feel that great. He doesn’t strictly have to disinfect them, and the shower is going to wash them again anyway, so he just tosses the gauze in the trash and rolls up the bandages to put in the wash later.

Ichigo is sitting on the couch when he comes back out. At the sound of his footsteps, he stands up and stretches, yawning.

“Thanks for teaching me your tricks,” he says. “I’ll practice while I’m away and I’ll beat your ass over winter break, just you wait.”

“You won’t, but you can try,” Uryuu fires back.

He shrugs. “Well, we’ll see. And don’t sweat the injury, all right? It’s training. Sometimes you get a little fucked up in the process. Means you’re pushing yourself as far as you can go. But try to be more responsible about it. Nerd.”

And with that, he’s out the door and gone.

The problem with Ichigo is that he always feels responsible. Uryuu retreats to the shower and stands petulantly under the stream of scalding water that hammers at his head and cascades down over his shoulders and back. It doesn’t wash away his frustration like he was secretly hoping it would, but his tense and aching muscles slowly start to relax, and the knot in his chest soon becomes a problem for his brain to solve. He already knows the answer, but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, because it’s not _his_ answer, it’s Ichigo’s.

Summer is drawing to an end. The nights are getting colder, the sun is setting earlier, and he is constantly dogged by the feeling that time is running out – the time he has with these people, the only ones who have ever bothered to understand, how he’s devoted almost his entire life to an ideal, how everything he’s fought for is dead, burned away by the wrathful fires of war. Barely anyone knows. And every time he draws the bow again, feels the reishi humming on his skin, he feels like he is already alone. Which is both true and untrue.

He feels lightheaded. Ichigo understands. Or, more accurately, he doesn’t understand, but he has the answers. _Whether you blame yourself or not is your own prerogative._ And the one that goes unspoken: _You don’t have to do this by yourself._ The children who fought against Aizen and Yhwach are linked together forever. It’s a bittersweet balm to the ache in his chest. He’d hoped to have someone standing with him at the end, hoped that it would be Ichigo and Chad and Orihime, but he can’t make them stay. They know, and they worry, but like a fleet of boats with rudders pointing in different directions, the motion of the world around them will push them apart eventually. And by the time he is left with barely anything more than the memories, he will have to be able to stand on his own two feet. He’s not sure the dreams will ever leave, but – they all say that they fade, eventually. It’s something to hope for.

He bows his head, letting the water pound down on his neck, and pushes his fingers through his wet hair. What is he ashamed of? That he’s not as strong as he thought he was? That he’s having trouble handling the effects of a war he should have been prepared for since birth? That he still believes it’s not entirely his fault, that he thinks a part of him is still blameless and pure? Maybe it’s the child in him that holds on so tightly to the idea that he acted virtuously, that he upheld his grandfather’s honor as best he could, that he has the right to be satisfied and happy. But Ichigo never blamed him or called him a traitor. When he cries, the tears are the same temperature as the water, and he can’t tell the difference between them.

Despite his doubts, his pessimism, and his despair, there’s still Ichigo. There’s still Chad. There’s still Orihime. And even if they lose each other someday, they’ll still have had _this._ The world will look so empty when they are gone, but he owes it to them to try to live something like a full life, to shed his self-pity and self-doubt, even if he feels like he doesn’t deserve to. They reached out to him. He can’t just ignore that. He has to _try._

He doesn’t know what the future will look like without them, but he has to keep going. He has to change, and everything around him has to change. It’s a promise, to cling to life and happiness the way they’ve shown him, building bridges until he passes the final river. It’s the only answer, even if it feels like he’s lying to himself. He’s killed, maimed, and destroyed lives for his friends, so what’s one little lie, especially one he only tells himself? _Start over again, from the beginning._

Something new is happening, and as usual, it’s Ichigo’s fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wenn du findest, dass ich habe etwas falsch übersetzt, bitte sag mir :) I bet there are at least 3 errors in that sentence too LMAO I was a very lazy student of German...
> 
> Blitz-Spalier - lightning trellis  
> Sprengel - a dialect word for Aspergill (Eng. aspergillum), an instrument used to asperse holy water  
> Übergrießen - "Pouring over," referring in this context to non-submersive baptism  
> Taufe - Baptism  
> Reichsapfel - The globus cruciger, an item symbolizing the dominion of both Christ and monarch over the world


	10. altair, who rises

Orihime is packing up to leave for Tokyo, and they’re all hanging out at her apartment on the pretext of helping her get everything in order, but in reality, Ichigo is cleaning out her fridge (which she didn’t ask him to do) and Chad is sprawled out on the couch, reading a comic. Uryuu is the only one doing anything remotely like helping, which is standing in the doorway to her bedroom repeatedly offering to help while she tries to shove everything she owns into two suitcases and a cardboard box and says she doesn’t need any help.

“I’m fine, honestly,” she grunts as she wedges a pair of slippers into the crevice between two stacks of shirts that stick out a good seven centimeters over the lip of the suitcase. He wonders if there’s any chance it will explode due to the extreme compression of its contents. No one is going with her, though, and she’s going to take a taxi, so this will have to do.

Her apartment, though less lived-in than his, is embarrassingly much more decorated and homey, even though she’s erasing the traces of her existence as he watches. On the walls, there’s a calendar with different pop stars for every month, a poster of the French Alps, photos she’s taken of Tokyo cityscapes and silly photobooth portraits with her friends. Just on her desk, there’s a mug full of pencils and half-cleaned paintbrushes, a roll of paper tape with a floral print, and a stack of notebooks with peppy slogans and cute animals drawn all over the covers, one for each class she’s taken. He thinks back to his own desk. It has a white surface. His cutting mat is rolled up on the left side. His sewing machine is pushed towards the back. That’s it. He wonders what she would think. Probably the same as Ichigo.

“Are you moving back into the same apartment? Same roommates?”

She nods, sweeping her hair out of her face as she looks up. “Well, kind of. Megumi and Junko, remember?”

“Oh.” He does remember. She told him on the night he got punched in the stomach by some random drunk. He’d started to forget about that…

Ichigo yawns, exaggerating loudly, in the living room. “Inoue, you done yet? I’m gonna fall asleep.”

Orihime looks flatly at her half-full closet. “No,” she calls back. “It’ll take ten minutes, I promise!”

“You said ‘ten minutes’ ten minutes ago! Just let Ishida help you, it’ll cut the time in half.”

“I mean, if you want me to,” Uryuu starts, but Orihime gives in and waves him down next to her. He’s pretty good at folding clothes, and she even compliments him on how fast he straightens out the wrinkled piles of shirts in her closet.

It’s a nice feeling, working next to each other, not really saying anything. She starts to hum some song while she works, and when he finishes squashing his last pile into the other suitcase, he sits back on his heels and watches her. The orange light of evening streaming through the windows makes her long brown hair shine like gold. It drapes over the arch of her back like a silk cape, shifting as she moves clothes from the floor to the suitcase. The notes of her song hang in the air like little lanterns.

She finishes putting everything away. All that’s left is to stuff the rest of her personal effects in a cardboard box. Scooping everything up in her arms, she stacks one thing on top of another, ceramic on top of paper, pencils rolling into crevices in between things. It’s going to be a nightmare to unpack, but it all ends up fitting, and he knows she doesn’t want to waste any more time on this chore.

“Ishida-kun, can you zip up the other suitcase while I do this one?”

Orihime gets up, rubs her knees, and sits down on top of the smaller suitcase, compressing the contents enough for the two sets of teeth in the zipper to lock together. Uryuu struggles with his for a moment, then follows her example and sits on the lid, yanking on the zipper tab. It still won’t budge. He’s not heavy enough.

She pushes his shoulder. “Scoot over. Let me help.” So he does, and their combined weight pushes the lid almost closed. “Okay! I think it’s ready!”

He zips the suitcase up, then stands, absently offering his hand to Orihime as he eyes the suitcase carefully for signs of an explosion. But it doesn’t explode, and her whole life is neatly packed away into two bulging suitcases and a beat-up cardboard box.

“Let’s go,” she says, and takes his hand. She pulls him into the living room where Ichigo looks up from his phone and Chad closes the covers of his comic. “Come on!”

Like a tugboat hauling ships out of their docks, she walks ahead of them to the door and throws it open. The evening light floods into the hall. They file out, and she locks the apartment behind them. The sun is blazing, huge and golden, sinking into the horizon as they walk to the bus stop. Orihime walks side by side with Ichigo and chatters brightly in his ear as he pretends, poorly, to not care. He knows this is the last time Ichigo will see her for months, if not an entire year, and Uryuu can tell that he’s listening despite the way he grunts in response to her questions. Like water running over stones in a creekbed, she’s _supposed_ to be there, glittering and laughing and constant.

Chad nudges him and he looks up, startled, to see him rolling his eyes.

“What?”

“You should be honest with her,” he says in a low voice. They’re a good distance behind Ichigo and Orihime, so he doesn’t need to, but maybe he’s trying to preserve Uryuu’s ego. “She knows something’s up, she’s not stupid.”

“I never said – why do you care, anyway?” Uryuu snaps, flustered. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

He changes the question, shaking his head. “Okay, then. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No!”

“Then just admit,” Chad lowers his voice conspiratorially, _“admit_ that you have a thing for her.”

“I do not have a _thing,”_ Uryuu hisses.

“Okay, how about telling her that you like her and make big sad eyes at her all the time when you hear her name? Let’s start there.”

“Absolutely _not.”_

Chad gives him the biggest eyeroll he thinks he’s ever seen. “All right. Chicken.”

That provokes him a little bit, but not enough to rise to the bait. All he responds with is a sullen _tch,_ and Chad shakes his head but keeps his silence pointedly aloof.

Dinner is a light affair. Well, Chad and Ichigo probably eat more than three times what Uryuu and Orihime do – combined, each – but it’s pretty slow and laid-back. For the most part. The two boys take turns glaring at him while Orihime isn’t looking. Eventually he starts glaring back and things get very heated. What do they want him to do? Ask her out? Because he’s not going to. It’s not his place, first of all, and they’re about to go back to college (even if Todai isn’t actually _that_ far away), so she doesn’t even have time for this, and she shouldn’t be held back by all of this baggage – she should be free to explore new things…

Well, she should be free to explore new things with someone who hasn’t tried to kill her. She’s forgiven him for it, even if she shouldn’t have, but that doesn’t mean that what he did is suddenly okay. Ethically, it makes his head hurt.

When Orihime excuses herself to use the bathroom, Chad keeps his mouth shut until the door closes behind her, then leans in and points at Uryuu with his chopsticks.

“Stop,” he says. Uryuu wants to swat the chopsticks out of his hand.

“Seriously, what is wrong with you?” Ichigo joins in. “Haven’t we had this talk already? Do you think she doesn’t know?”

“Even if she knows, I don’t want to say anything about it.”

“So you’re just going to let it sit there and make it a huge awkward thing that we’re not supposed to talk about? Oh, that’s _real_ mature.”

“It wasn’t awkward until you _made_ it awkward, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo widens his eyes, faking shock. “Oh, _I_ made your obvious, giant crush on Inoue uncomfortable?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean? Forget it, I don’t care. Just talk to her and stop making all of us feel awkward, got it?” Ichigo points with his chopsticks, too. Uryuu wonders if he just naturally gravitates to the rudest option available to him.

“How is it making _you_ feel awkward? It’s my business!”

“Like your ‘business’ has never affected anyone else?”

“What the hell,” he begins to say, because Ichigo is talking about the Wandenreich, of course. Uryuu barely shuts up in time for Orihime to return from the bathroom and sit down, unaware of the little spat that just transpired. Uryuu refuses to look at Ichigo and concentrates on his food. He _knows_ they don’t blame him. They know he takes responsibility for everything that happened. But he also knows that there has to be some residual bitterness built up inside. There just _has_ to be. For Ichigo, most of all. It was bound to come out sometime. He still hates hearing it, though, and that little slip, that glimpse, makes him realize that it’s going to take a long time before any of them are actually as “over it” as they seem.

Orihime is obviously aware that something happened while she was gone, but she can’t figure out exactly what, so she doesn’t mention it, looking down at her food while she eats. A creeping feeling of guilt takes over Uryuu as he realizes that this is probably what Ichigo meant.

He’s tried to avoid thinking about it because he never considered it a possibility anyway. He’s used to protecting Orihime, or fighting by her side. The idea of burdening her with his various problems feels – well, cruel. She’s not like Ichigo, who doesn’t really care about sparing his feelings, or Chad, who is good at remaining objective but sympathetic. Orihime feels more directly than all of them. It would be irresponsible to make her worry about him, especially because she knows how he thinks. He doesn’t even know if he could drop his baggage long enough to help her take care of hers. And then there’s the problem of starting something up with the guy who tried to kill you once. Or, even worse, the guy who tried to kill you once trying to start something up with _you._

And more than that – she’s amazing, beautiful, strong, kind, smart, spontaneous, and gracious, and an incredible warrior, and has as strong a sense of loyalty as Ichigo… but she’s also just another girl. Not in who she is, but what she deserves. Orihime has been through so much, seen so many things that she wouldn’t have had to if only they could all have stopped being so stupid. She deserves a break. She deserves friends who put her happiness first. She deserves a life where no one’s trying to destroy the people she loves. She deserves to be “just another girl,” just like Ichigo has been trying so hard to be “just another guy.”

Dinner ends and they spend a few minutes sorting out the check. Uryuu doesn’t eat out often, but he has a few bills and change on him from errands, so he can cover himself. He maybe says a few words that he doesn’t remember, and then he follows the other three out of the restaurant.

Uryuu lives in the north of town, in Kitakawase. Orihime, Ichigo, and Chad live on the opposite side, in Minamikawase and Sakurabashi. Mashiba, where they are now, is right in the middle. They’ll cross through the park and he’ll wave goodbye to them. He doesn’t exactly feel like walking home, but he’ll probably need to let Ichigo cool down for a day or two before they can talk normally again.

However, Ichigo, throwing off his predictions yet again, turns to him right after the door to the restaurant swings shut behind them.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Ichigo takes him aside, one or two shop-fronts down the street. And he did it without yelling or doing anything obnoxious, too. He has a little bit of a worried look on his face and Uryuu is maybe a tiny bit touched that he feels like this is necessary.

“Look… I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t your fault. And I already said that I don’t care about what you did before you came back.”

Uryuu shrugs. “Yeah. It’s not a big deal, honestly. I still have that, um, reaction. Whenever I think about it. I guess.”

“I know what you mean.” He could be referring to any number of things but Uryuu doesn’t press. “But what I said about Inoue, though. I still mean all of that.”

He looks away for a quick moment, trying to put together all of his thoughts from the past half hour into something coherent and quick. It doesn’t quite work, but he plows forward anyway. If anything, he might get Ichigo to stop bothering him. Not that he’ll be around to do it in a week, but he doesn’t think he could stand another week of this anyway.

“Do you want me to ask her out, or do you want me to just talk to her? What am I going to tell her that she doesn’t already know? And you’re assuming I want to be with her anyway. Or that I _can._ It’s not that easy.”

“It’s not about the result, it’s about being honest,” Ichigo says sharply. “As long as it’s in the open, she can relax. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she hates it when people try to keep secrets from her. Did you notice how nervous we made her? That’s what I hate. If we can’t help her be happy, the least we can do is make her feel comfortable.”

There’s a poorly-hidden note of pain in his voice that instantly makes Uryuu feel like the worst person on earth. Sure, it’s hard to talk about this, but he does owe it to Orhime to at least – come clean, or whatever. He still doesn’t want to, but he should. Taking what Ichigo said into account, maybe he has to.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Yeah. Okay.”

Ichigo nods, but doesn’t walk away yet, and looks like he wants to say something but is holding it back.

“What?”

“Look,” he says, sighing. “I might be making, I dunno, assumptions, or whatever. But you – you think you’re unlikable, don’t you? Or that whatever you want, you don’t deserve it, or it’s not meant for you, or something like that, but that’s bullshit. You’re wrong. I thought the exact same thing, and I was wrong.”

“About me?”

“About _me,”_ Ichigo says, then waves his hands hurriedly when Uryuu opens his mouth to ask questions. “I didn’t want to say anything. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but… it’s more than I expected. So. Just – don’t count yourself out, is all I’m saying.”

“Do I _know—?”_

He groans. “Do you know any other guys going to med school in Asahikawa besides me?”

“No…”

“Then no, you don’t. Any other questions, Detective Conan? You good?”

Uryuu doesn’t know if he quite believes him, but he does feel better. “Yeah. And thank you.”

Ichigo gives him a clap on the shoulder and he laughs again. They walk back to Orihime and Chad, who are watching a cat video on her phone. Orihime giggles as the cat does something incredibly stupid – he can’t quite see – and Chad laughs a little bit.

“I dunno, Inoue. I’m more of a dog person.”

“They’re cute, though,” she protests. “Don’t you think it was cute?”

“Are we ready to leave?” Ichigo grouses.

Orihime pouts and stuffs her phone in her jeans pocket. “You know what they say about people who don’t like cats, Kurosaki-kun…”

“What _do_ they say?”

Chad interrupts with a huge yawn. “I think I’m going to head home now.”

Uryuu prepares to say his goodbyes, but instead, Orihime moves toward him and stands by his side.

“You guys go on ahead,” she says. “I want to talk to Ishida-kun for a bit. Is that okay?” She turns and looks at him anxiously.

“Um. It’s fine. I guess,” he stutters. “What do you want to—”

Ichigo hauls Chad off at breakneck speed with a jaunty wave goodbye and they’re alone on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Orihime takes his arm and pulls him across the street. They walk across a short lawn and between some tall, dark trees. He almost trips over a branch in the darkness. Eventually they end up at a bench on a jogging path, lit brightly at regular intervals with tall street lamps. The moon shines weakly from behind a screen of clouds.

Orihime’s sudden burst of forwardness seems to have faded, and she sits down on the bench, tapping her fingers on her thighs. Uryuu sits down next to her, slowly, not sure what she wants. He anticipates several subjects of discussion, based on the stuff Ichigo and Chad have been bothering him about: _look, it’s not gonna work out,_ or _hey, would you mind not mooning over me,_ or something.

She says: “Ishida-kun…”

And he says: “What is it, Inoue-san?”

“Call me Orihime, okay?”

He gulps. “Okay. Orihime. Um – and I’m Uryuu.”

Orihime smiles, bright and relieved. “So, I was thinking about the first time we went to Soul Society. Do you remember that?”

“Of course.”

She twists her fingers together. “I… was worried about Kurosaki-kun at first. Because he always gets into trouble, you know? And I’m not sure he ever really knows how to get out. And I wanted him to save Rukia, too, because she’s such a good person, so that was like – it blocked everything else out of my mind, it was so huge. Like the moon, it shines so brightly, and all of the stars just seem like they’re barely there. But then you told that shinigami to take me and leave, because you thought I would get hurt, and then I didn’t see you for so long…”

“That – Kurotsuchi… it was better that you weren’t there. It ended up being something I had to take care of myself.”

“So it _did_ have something to do with the Quincy?”

Uryuu looks over at her in surprise. “Yeah.”

“What was it?” Her nostalgic tone has changed. She’s serious now.

“Kurotsuchi is their head scientist. And you know the shinigami and the Quincy don’t get along very well. He… experimented on them,” he bites out. “It was torture, mostly. They took my grandfather to his laboratory.”

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and looks down at her hands. It makes his heart hurt. A few years ago she would probably have cried, eyes wide in shock, but she’s seen so much since then, learned to hide so much more.

“It’s not your fault.”

“You never told me about that.” Orihime looks up, and maybe he doesn’t know her as well as he thought he did, because she looks like she’s trying to hold back tears. “There are a lot of things you haven’t told me, right? Things I was afraid to ask about because I thought it would be rude, but I know you’d never tell me about them if I didn’t. Like how you got your Quincy powers, or what you think of your dad, or how you learned to sew, or even little things like your favorite food and what you do on the weekends! And I didn’t want to pry, but then you – we saw you standing there in that s-stupid, ugly uniform with those _monsters_ and I thought to myself, _I should have asked him more questions, I should have been rude,_ because I felt like I didn’t know you at all. I didn’t know what you were going to do. And I thought that maybe I could have stopped it if I just hadn’t been scared and talked to you like I wanted to.”

She doesn’t sound sad, she sounds frustrated and a little angry. Two tears slip out of her eyes and down her cheeks and she wipes them away with her hands, drawing a shaking breath.

“I’m sorry,” he says this time. “You’re right. I don’t like talking about myself. It’s… I don’t know. Uncomfortable.”

“So you keep all of your plans and thoughts to yourself and don’t tell anyone about them until it’s too late? Did you want us to think that you were our enemy? Because Kurosaki-kun didn’t. He didn’t think you would ever try to kill us, not purposefully. And then you _did._ And I get why, I know you had to – to keep up your disguise, or whatever, but I couldn’t trust you like he did.”

His heart sinks. _So this is what she wanted to talk about._ It’s not like anything she’s saying is unfounded or unfair, so he can’t disagree with her. He doesn’t want to, either. But he’d hoped they wouldn’t talk about it too much, so he could pretend that she’d forgiven him more than she apparently has.

When he doesn’t reply, Orihime shakes her head. “When I was in Hueco Mundo with the Espada, I was scared. I couldn’t trust anyone. I knew they were baiting all of my friends to come after me, and I almost didn’t want to be rescued, because it would put all of you in danger. But I guess I was a little selfish, because I was sure you would. I spent a long time worrying if any of you would get hurt, when you came. And then Kurosaki-kun had that – fight, and it was like all of my nightmares came true… but you were there. You tried to protect me. I don’t know if you remember this, because you were kinda loopy from losing blood, but when I put you under the regeneration shield, you kept asking me if I was okay… and that’s all I could think about when I saw you with those Quincy. What changed? Why were you with them? I thought we were friends. I saw you almost die trying to save me. And then I found out you weren’t really one of them, but… I was shocked.” She bites her lip hesitantly. “Do you see what I’m trying to say?”

He’s not sure, so he shakes his head. His heart is racing, brain full of a thousand theories about what she means. It can’t be anything good, that’s for sure.

She sighs, and looks away for a moment. The silence between them is filled with the nervous chirping of crickets.

“I like you, Uryuu.” Soft, sad. And he can’t help but smile a little when he hears her say his name. “I like you a lot. I don’t know you as well as I should, but I know what kind of person you are, and I like that person. I just – it’s hard. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I don’t want you to deal with that kind of doubt.”

_Oh._

There’s a lump in his throat. He doesn’t know how it got there. He’d known what he was getting into with the Wandenreich infiltration. He’d known that it would make it hard to trust him. Still, the reality of it is affecting him more than he thought it would. He’d drawn the logical conclusion a long time ago. Why is it so surprising to hear it out loud?

So he says, “I understand.”

“I don’t think you do.” She takes his hand in hers and turns to face him. It takes him a second to get up the nerve to raise his head to see the look on her face. It’s not pitying or sad, like he expected. It’s… happy, maybe. Or not quite that – hopeful. Yes, that’s it. He doesn’t understand why, though.

“What do you think of me, Uryuu?”

It’s a simple question. He thinks she’s a wonderful friend, someone who lights up everything around her, who feels more potently than anyone he’s ever met. She’s the sun, warm and bright, able to soften even the coldest and most callous personality. Sure, she hates confrontation; it makes him want to be a better person, so she won’t be afraid to approach him. Sure, she goes on the weirdest tangents sometimes; that’s exciting, not annoying. She tends to have a one-track mind, and she’s forgetful, sometimes inconsiderate in the way she says things, but who doesn’t have flaws? She’s strong and smart and beautiful in every way. That’s what he thinks of her.

“I don’t know,” he says instead. “I think… you’re amazing.” Which doesn’t capture even a fraction of what he actually thinks, but he’s never really been good at explaining himself.

She smiles again, and it makes his heart soar.

“I think you’re amazing, too. You’re amazing, and I can’t – do _this,_ not right now, not as the person I am, but I want to, and I will. Someday. Just… not right now.”

“You don’t have to,” he starts, but she shakes her head and interrupts him.

“You’re not ready to say it. But you don’t have to be. I’m – I’m not, either. But maybe in the future, when we’re different enough, if I want something like this… if you want to wait that long…”

“Of _course,”_ he blurts out, then feels the blood rushing to his face in embarrassment.

Orihime laughs. “Okay. How about… we try again in seven years? When we’re done with university and we’re – you know, really _out there_ in the world… Do you think that’s long enough?”

“Seven years,” he muses. “Yeah. I think… I think that’s enough.”

They stand up together, hand in hand, in the middle of the empty park.

“Then… I’ll see you in the future.”

“I’ll see you in the future,” he echoes, and he can’t help the grin that tugs at his lips.

“Good night, Uryuu.”

“Good night, Orihime.”

He sees her smile as she turns away from him to walk back to her apartment. Normally he’d offer to walk her back, but he knows that he can’t, not now. Maybe someday in seven years, when they’ll be just Orihime and Uryuu, when the memories of being comrades and traitors and classmates have faded just enough. When they’re leading new lives. When they can look at each other without seeing the fresh scars of war.

Uryuu walks to a bus stop on the other side of the park and waits. Cars pass on the road in front of him, bright headlights lighting up the road in front of him. The sound of engines rumbling and the chirping of crickets and the distant whir of cicadas surround him. He feels, for once, _good_ – Chad had cracked his armor, and Ichigo jolted him back to reality, but Orihime is the real anchor. He doesn’t quite know if he loves her, but it’s something very close, and he can’t let it go yet, because he knows she feels the same way. And it’s a simple, foolish thing, but she likes him, thinks he has a place in her future, wants to be around him someday, even though she truly believed at one time that he’d left her for dead. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve her attention. And maybe before seven years is up she’ll have found someone worthy of her, someone who doesn’t know about age-old blood feuds or ghosts or the world unseen, someone kind and soft and gentle. But that doesn’t mean she’ll let go of him. None of them will. He doesn’t want to let go of them, either. To hear that, to really know that he hasn’t driven them all away, means more to him than they could ever imagine.

The bus comes, and he boards, and the doors close behind him. There is something there, in the future. Something bright and shining, something that he cannot help but travel toward. A beautiful moment in time, just over the horizon, just beyond his fingertips. It’s real, now. This is the bridge, the promise. All he has left to do now is hold on and wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost done! thanks for your comments & support so far!


	11. postscript - bridges from here to there

The world is silent again after everyone leaves. He didn’t expect anything else, but it all falls quickly into gray monotony as he prepares to return for the fall semester. Studying, eating, cleaning, training here and there, doing odd jobs and trying to look for a local tailor who needs a hand. Some things are different, though. Urahara invites him over once or twice to drink or play cards or whatever with Tessai and the kids. It’s nice of him to be concerned. Ichigo’s old man calls him up, too. Suddenly his life is crowded with people – or maybe he just hadn’t seen them before because he hadn’t been awake. He spends the very last days of summer doing nothing at all with them. It feels nice.

He’s had a few bad dreams lately. Sometimes they’re daydreams. Ulquiorra and Ichigo dueling in Hueco Mundo, as usual, with a smattering of Wandenreich scenes. They frustrate him, a little. He can’t have expected to recover so easily from those, but his mindset is so different from when the summer first started. There should be at least some kind of change.

On the first day of the semester, he wakes up disgustingly early, gets dressed, does his whole morning routine, then packs his bag and walks to the bus stop just outside the apartment complex. When it arrives, he taps his farecard over the sensor and takes a seat near the door, bag on the floor between his feet and the back of the seat in front of him. Absently, he watches the scenery pass by as the driver makes a few more stops and slips through the business district to the train station. It rained last night and the streets are still shining and wet, covered in leaves from the trees planted every few yards in the sidewalks. It’s quiet. Passengers get on and off the bus with as little fuss as possible. He thinks he might recognize a few of them, the old lady with the hat and the other university-age boy with bags under his eyes.

The train station is quiet, too. He pushes through the turnstile and walks to his platform without looking at any of the signs, since he’s memorized his route. Nothing out of the ordinary, and he’s six minutes early for his train. Sitting down on a bench, he takes out his cell phone and checks the weather, his email, his SMS. Ichigo posted a picture of a rat in some kind of plastic container in their group chat last night and commented: _i hope we dont have to do anything gross to these guys, theyre p chill. i named this 1 “dumbass” bc he keeps eating the bedding_

Someone touches his shoulder and he shrugs them off, turning to glare at them.

“—Ryuuken?”

His father sits down next to him without asking if it’s okay or anything. Uryuu stares at him warily. He can’t predict what he’s going to do. Is he here to scold him or try to awkwardly apologize, or something completely different? He’s called a few times, but they haven’t actually seen each other in a month.

Ryuuken takes the cigarette out of his mouth and blows white smoke into the blue morning air, then coughs into his sleeve. He’s wearing a white dress shirt, blue tie, and gray slacks, appropriate for walking around in a hospital and yelling at hapless technicians.

“You should stop smoking.”

“I should do a lot of things.”

“Like say _good morning_ to someone?”

“Good morning, Uryuu,” he says mildly, which catches him off-guard, because at all other times in his life he could have expected a harsh word about disrespect.

“Good morning.”

Ryuuken takes another pull on his cigarette and exhales slowly, a thoughtful look on his face.

“You know, I really never saw you off to school after your mother died. Your grandfather did most of that,” he comments casually.

Uryuu shrugs. “Wasn’t a big deal. You had work.”

“I regret it. I was more focused on setting an example for my staff than for my son. I should have done a lot of things differently. I see that now.”

“So… you’re here to see me off?” He fidgets with the strap of his bag.

“Yes. I didn’t know if I would catch you on your way here, so I came to the station. I just wanted to say that – if you’re so inclined, you’re welcome to live back home.”

Financially, it’s tempting. He could do without having to scrape money together to meet rent every month. But given their history, he doesn’t know if he could live there for more than a month without feeling the old stress and emotional weirdness start to overwhelm him again.

“I’ll visit,” he says simply. “Just call.”

Ryuuken nods. “All right.”

They’re silent for a moment, and then his father seems to notice something.

“You’re not wearing the cross,” he says, tone completely neutral. He’s probably surprised, but Uryuu can’t tell.

“You were right. Being a Quincy isn’t worth the cost.”

“Oh?” A hint of curisosity creeps into his voice.

“I’ll still help out where I’m needed. But I don’t care about the honor anymore.” The corners of his mouth pull up in a smile, against his will. “Is that what you thought when you stopped talking to your mother?”

Ryuuken laughs, short and bitter. “Something like that. You’re growing up, Uryuu.”

“Yeah.”

He can see the train in the distance, growing larger bit by bit as it rumbles down the track. He stands up, moving to the edge of the platform, and Ryuuken moves with him, too. Suddenly there’s an arm around his shoulders, and he tenses up a little bit before he realizes that this is normal. It’s just a comforting gesture, a reassurance. _You’ll be okay._ And it doesn’t make up for everything that came before, not even close, but it’s an effort, and he’ll take what he can get.

They don’t say anything as it hurtles into the station, brakes whining against the track as it pulls to a stop. Its doors open automatically, and a few early commuters step onto the platform, walking briskly towards the exit.

Uryuu turns to look at his father, expression carefully even. His face is still inscrutable, but it doesn't scare him.

“Goodbye, Dad,” he says, and boards the train without waiting to see if his face changes or not. He sits down and soon the train begins to move again, taking him closer and closer to Tokyo.

An effort. He’ll take what he can get. He’ll do what he can do. One step at a time, closer and closer to someday, to a future where their paths cross again and again, where the bridges between them arch across the mighty rivers of time and distance. One step. One day.

He can do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, commenting, and following along as I finally got this posted! I just noticed that I posted the first chapter three years after I created my AO3 account. I guess that should have been a sign. More in this series to come soon(tm) in the near future. It's been a pleasure writing for such lovely readers!


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